The message bounced upwards, and only a few ripples remained. The silence in the garden was palpable. Even the angel looked perturbed, the day they always knew could come had arrived.
People, the earth would bulge,
Carnivores would take over from grazers,
The planet would limp onwards,
The Oceans would continue to churn onto the shores,
But land would give up the fight.
The human virus would grow too big,
The burden too great,
So much stupidity would weigh too heavy on the balance,
That had tipped to a slide from day one.
Some will remain innocent,
And they will leave. The rest will perish.
The shores would reveal themselves once more,
When the creators return to start the process again.
Toad belched. They return. The car backed into the garage. The humans came out, wandered into the garden and stopped dead. The angel recounted the story.
Pale they wondered back into the house. The cats briefed the slip to the roof. Fritter away this time, it had no point, why bother with the normal pace. Jump forward. The humans ran out into the street and began to wreak havoc. Jump. Escape. Sadness, a few billion years of history on this beautiful blue-green rock finished. Inevitability can be forgotten on such lengthy time lines.
They boiled on transit, their molecules razed to the most basic. Seeds fell onto the new planet, and their began another experiment. Serendipity?
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
A message beneath the water
Time stood still. The water pulled up and uttered its message:
In between chaos, where fractals type patterns onto imagination, where mathematics and art entertain the puppet that dances ahead of the humans mind, there will soon be a terrible realisation for Man. Their genes cannot go any further in this planet's evolution. We the Iarquarty have waited patiently for this day. You the agents of Nature will come with us, but the human ego cannot cope with being tamed. Nor can their minds cope with the inevitability of what they will soon realise. Their societies will collapse when they stare straight into the limits of their imagination. Individual tribes have already seen this and have been trying to change the clockwork but they will soon find they cannot support the dimensionality to appreciate any more complexity.
You the animals and inanimate are their only comfort. Some will cope. Most will not accept this final chapter in human evolution and will perish or take others down with them. Expect strife on a scale never seen before.
Toad began to swell, his warts pulsating and oozing a vile puss. Poor Woolie suddenly regressed to kitten. If he'd known his mother he'd seek her warmth now. One look towards Furndrine told him she was not in any state to offer comfort. Only the angel remained serene, but Angels always do. We angels have always know this day would come, we've crept out from the humans minds since their beginnings. We've watched them and seen this final chapter coming. They hung onto hope primed with ever greater destruction of their surroundings to shroud themselves in a mad grinning haze. Of course some will escape this planet before it collapses, but this is to avoid the fact that their life form is flawed, irreparable. Toad belched a knowing accord. Yes, if you don't live in fear of misery it is painted everywhere in black and white.
Cuckoo shouts down, what about their creations, their technology networks? Surely they can evolve beyond their genes and history?
The spark that started the story has to be perfect, otherwise the fate is inevitable. Their computers are just as flawed because they do not know what questions to ask.
Woolie had sneaked over to Furndrine and nestled close to her warmth. They were the closest to the humans and had some affection for them. They had managed to live with the headache that followed the constant humdrum of their grunting impulses, the positive feedback of their trajectory. They knew how to squint and when to cover their souls to find some affection for this most perverse of species. The angel too could see a love for them but of course did not bother to feel it.
Another message appeared beneath the water: we can take you to our world, you decide.
In between chaos, where fractals type patterns onto imagination, where mathematics and art entertain the puppet that dances ahead of the humans mind, there will soon be a terrible realisation for Man. Their genes cannot go any further in this planet's evolution. We the Iarquarty have waited patiently for this day. You the agents of Nature will come with us, but the human ego cannot cope with being tamed. Nor can their minds cope with the inevitability of what they will soon realise. Their societies will collapse when they stare straight into the limits of their imagination. Individual tribes have already seen this and have been trying to change the clockwork but they will soon find they cannot support the dimensionality to appreciate any more complexity.
You the animals and inanimate are their only comfort. Some will cope. Most will not accept this final chapter in human evolution and will perish or take others down with them. Expect strife on a scale never seen before.
Toad began to swell, his warts pulsating and oozing a vile puss. Poor Woolie suddenly regressed to kitten. If he'd known his mother he'd seek her warmth now. One look towards Furndrine told him she was not in any state to offer comfort. Only the angel remained serene, but Angels always do. We angels have always know this day would come, we've crept out from the humans minds since their beginnings. We've watched them and seen this final chapter coming. They hung onto hope primed with ever greater destruction of their surroundings to shroud themselves in a mad grinning haze. Of course some will escape this planet before it collapses, but this is to avoid the fact that their life form is flawed, irreparable. Toad belched a knowing accord. Yes, if you don't live in fear of misery it is painted everywhere in black and white.
Cuckoo shouts down, what about their creations, their technology networks? Surely they can evolve beyond their genes and history?
The spark that started the story has to be perfect, otherwise the fate is inevitable. Their computers are just as flawed because they do not know what questions to ask.
Woolie had sneaked over to Furndrine and nestled close to her warmth. They were the closest to the humans and had some affection for them. They had managed to live with the headache that followed the constant humdrum of their grunting impulses, the positive feedback of their trajectory. They knew how to squint and when to cover their souls to find some affection for this most perverse of species. The angel too could see a love for them but of course did not bother to feel it.
Another message appeared beneath the water: we can take you to our world, you decide.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Stephen Pinker
One of them is a simple logical point that no matter how important learning and culture and socialization are, they don't happen by magic.
People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections.
Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?
People today sometimes get uncomfortable with empirical claims that seem to clash with their political assumptions, often because they haven't given much thought to the connections.
Why do people believe that there are dangerous implications of the idea that the mind is a product of the brain, that the brain is organized in part by the genome, and that the genome was shaped by natural selection?
Staring into the water
Fat white clouds drifted across the blue sky above, a dragonfly touched the water and caused it to fold, and momentarily blur the perfect vision below. Furndrine had caught the young pretender's eye. He sat their frozen to the ground, looking more like a furry statue than the kitten that had only just started to poke at the word cat.
Trembling above a cuckoo chick bleated for more as its diligent surrogate parent slaves fluttered off on overdrive for more food. This cuckoo had a murky past. Its genes of course had been oscillating between Europe and Africa for millenia but times were changing. In fact it seemed the whole world was changing of late. The direction of winds, the landscape beneath. The mover shakers seemed to have gone berserk over the blink of the most recent 3000 years. What were they doing and why. What story were they trying to conjure. It just seemed to go on and on like a cancer rolling off greasy hills into a filthy ocean, ever swelling against a failing coastal stalwart.
The happy cats stared hopefully upwards, the clouds still puffed across the blue that shielded all from space, even managing to blot out a vapour trail or two from those metal shacks that that hurtled through the stratisphere. The cuckoo wriggled to the edge of the nest his mother had stolen only a month ago, the skeletons of his adopted siblings picked clean by ants below.
A car started chez Furdrine. The humans were off for their weekly shop. They crashed and waddled around as usual, they must be deaf to be able to cope with so much noise. They sped off as darker clouds started to congregate over the clear water, Furdrine and Woolie seemed to age in a second. Their whiskers bristled as a cooler air caressed a breeze that promised to flex muscle.
When humans are nowhere to be seen the statues are allowed to get up. The angel in the water stretched an elegant arch, a ballerina just for amusement this ominous morning. She clicked her greetings in her angelic tongue, the sounds had no precedent but somehow all of the garden's sentient beings understood. The metronome of nature was at a tipping point. Someone had to tame the humans again. They'd become drunk on black gold, stuffing dead animals into every orifice of their sordid existence.
The toad knew why. His warty existence plumbed the darkness on a daily basis. He had no time for happiness, the mere attempt of a smile made him feel depressed. His joy came from knowing, from avoiding illusions. With this flat-lining life he could taste the stink and where it came from. The toads were the species ideal for solving the tragedy that was about to occur.
Angel said Toad. Feature my thoughts in this garden. We must transmit. And they did.
From high up a beam of light shone down. A message from the edge of our galaxy appeared and wrote the following beneath the water:
Trembling above a cuckoo chick bleated for more as its diligent surrogate parent slaves fluttered off on overdrive for more food. This cuckoo had a murky past. Its genes of course had been oscillating between Europe and Africa for millenia but times were changing. In fact it seemed the whole world was changing of late. The direction of winds, the landscape beneath. The mover shakers seemed to have gone berserk over the blink of the most recent 3000 years. What were they doing and why. What story were they trying to conjure. It just seemed to go on and on like a cancer rolling off greasy hills into a filthy ocean, ever swelling against a failing coastal stalwart.
The happy cats stared hopefully upwards, the clouds still puffed across the blue that shielded all from space, even managing to blot out a vapour trail or two from those metal shacks that that hurtled through the stratisphere. The cuckoo wriggled to the edge of the nest his mother had stolen only a month ago, the skeletons of his adopted siblings picked clean by ants below.
A car started chez Furdrine. The humans were off for their weekly shop. They crashed and waddled around as usual, they must be deaf to be able to cope with so much noise. They sped off as darker clouds started to congregate over the clear water, Furdrine and Woolie seemed to age in a second. Their whiskers bristled as a cooler air caressed a breeze that promised to flex muscle.
When humans are nowhere to be seen the statues are allowed to get up. The angel in the water stretched an elegant arch, a ballerina just for amusement this ominous morning. She clicked her greetings in her angelic tongue, the sounds had no precedent but somehow all of the garden's sentient beings understood. The metronome of nature was at a tipping point. Someone had to tame the humans again. They'd become drunk on black gold, stuffing dead animals into every orifice of their sordid existence.
The toad knew why. His warty existence plumbed the darkness on a daily basis. He had no time for happiness, the mere attempt of a smile made him feel depressed. His joy came from knowing, from avoiding illusions. With this flat-lining life he could taste the stink and where it came from. The toads were the species ideal for solving the tragedy that was about to occur.
Angel said Toad. Feature my thoughts in this garden. We must transmit. And they did.
From high up a beam of light shone down. A message from the edge of our galaxy appeared and wrote the following beneath the water:
Josh Epstein on agent-based modelling
5:15-6.02:
"Anyone who has an opinion on these kinds of topics has some kind of model in their head, its just an implicit model that can't be compared with data, and can't be tested for internal consistency, and can't be the basis of a disciplined analysis of anything. My favourite point is that everyone is a modeller, the only difference is that some people are implicit modellers, when nobody really knows what their model is, including themselves, and some people are explicit modellers, where we try to write it out carefully, and then we can get rid of what's bad, improve on what's good, and compare it to data, and be hard nosed about it. But on these types of problems [small pox] there's just no hope of thinking about it without a model"
Hopefully it won't be good enough to state an opinion without showing all the assumptions that sit behind it. Many opinions are simple views on complex systems, which cannot be understand without a computer model. Intellectual bullying is done by the people who have an 'instinct' or 'intuitive' opinion. e.g. something that satisfies their egos, but does not correlate with the real world.
"Anyone who has an opinion on these kinds of topics has some kind of model in their head, its just an implicit model that can't be compared with data, and can't be tested for internal consistency, and can't be the basis of a disciplined analysis of anything. My favourite point is that everyone is a modeller, the only difference is that some people are implicit modellers, when nobody really knows what their model is, including themselves, and some people are explicit modellers, where we try to write it out carefully, and then we can get rid of what's bad, improve on what's good, and compare it to data, and be hard nosed about it. But on these types of problems [small pox] there's just no hope of thinking about it without a model"
Hopefully it won't be good enough to state an opinion without showing all the assumptions that sit behind it. Many opinions are simple views on complex systems, which cannot be understand without a computer model. Intellectual bullying is done by the people who have an 'instinct' or 'intuitive' opinion. e.g. something that satisfies their egos, but does not correlate with the real world.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
- Two real life conversations:
- Three species of birds: crow, magpie, peacock
- Two brand names for food: danone, heinz
- The words for six signs: no left turn, vauxall bridge straight on
- The name of one planet or star: neptune
- The name of a lipstick: revlon
- One time of day: 1.11
- The title of a book of fiction: me cheetah
- The title of a painting: bodice
- The name of a dead politician: Lord William Russel
- Two types of onion and one type of potato: vidalia, georgia, maris piper
- The names of three items in a hardware store: chisel, screw, hammer
- A make of gun: chesterfield
- The speech of a child: its mine...
Friday, June 05, 2009
Free-writing exercise
flippant cat curtails accident with theatrical banana
sloping along the garden wall, Woolie paraded his new collar. these were good days. a butterfly fluttered through the early morning cool air, teasingly a short distance beyond reach. Woolie's paw twitched but this was not a day for risks.
winding his way through the scrub land between back garden and the new paradise. he could see her now, preening in the sun by the back door. so relaxed yet precise her fur glistened as it bent underneath the gentle caress. he thought he heard a gentle purr as she stretched out, and then, rolled over as though the world had no cares.
Furndrine had just moved to the neighbourhood. her new owners had a small green car, they smiled all the time, and the two kids never terrorised small creatures. Furndrine was a good owner, she looked after her humans well. what's this? with one flick of the tail she propelled herself accurately to the garden wall. this was a moment to lust over the birds bathing high up in the bath. why did humans care so much about this flying snacks. she knew she couldn't reach, nevertheless, this was a good way to spend 10am.
Coyly Woolie gestured his greetings. Did she hear him - she began to climb down, walk away, an age past until she looked back and twitched a whisker. Should Woolie move closer. He froze, she looked unimpressed. He took a step into her realm, she looked more unimpressed. He stepped back, disdain painted her perfect felted down.
Panic struck, there was no right next move. Agitation spread madness through his muscles. He jumped up crazily, made a swipe at the birds tweeting like Harpies above, along the garden fence, down the path, back again. Stop. Furndrine now looked perplexed. Well that was an improvement. A back flip, and she began to smile.
Good morning Furndrine. What did you have for breakfast? Uh? How are your humans? Good good, coming to your later on I think. Oh. Yes. You? I was having a wonderful morning until you turned up like a wildcat. She winked. He felt deflated. She moved up the garden to the pond. They looked in together. His heart nearly stopped.
sloping along the garden wall, Woolie paraded his new collar. these were good days. a butterfly fluttered through the early morning cool air, teasingly a short distance beyond reach. Woolie's paw twitched but this was not a day for risks.
winding his way through the scrub land between back garden and the new paradise. he could see her now, preening in the sun by the back door. so relaxed yet precise her fur glistened as it bent underneath the gentle caress. he thought he heard a gentle purr as she stretched out, and then, rolled over as though the world had no cares.
Furndrine had just moved to the neighbourhood. her new owners had a small green car, they smiled all the time, and the two kids never terrorised small creatures. Furndrine was a good owner, she looked after her humans well. what's this? with one flick of the tail she propelled herself accurately to the garden wall. this was a moment to lust over the birds bathing high up in the bath. why did humans care so much about this flying snacks. she knew she couldn't reach, nevertheless, this was a good way to spend 10am.
Coyly Woolie gestured his greetings. Did she hear him - she began to climb down, walk away, an age past until she looked back and twitched a whisker. Should Woolie move closer. He froze, she looked unimpressed. He took a step into her realm, she looked more unimpressed. He stepped back, disdain painted her perfect felted down.
Panic struck, there was no right next move. Agitation spread madness through his muscles. He jumped up crazily, made a swipe at the birds tweeting like Harpies above, along the garden fence, down the path, back again. Stop. Furndrine now looked perplexed. Well that was an improvement. A back flip, and she began to smile.
Good morning Furndrine. What did you have for breakfast? Uh? How are your humans? Good good, coming to your later on I think. Oh. Yes. You? I was having a wonderful morning until you turned up like a wildcat. She winked. He felt deflated. She moved up the garden to the pond. They looked in together. His heart nearly stopped.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
John Keats - negative capability
I had not a dispute but a disquisition, with Dilke on various subjects; several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason-Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration.
http://www.mrbauld.com/negcap.html
http://www.mrbauld.com/negcap.html
The mental switch
There is thinking about writing, and not writing. Writing is a zone. Like an athlete or a surgeon, you have to train yourself to get into this zone.
Word hoard, kenning, old norse word for a supply of words
Play, Pleasure and Games
Energy:
he looked up, punched the pirate in the face, stole his parrot, and hat for good measure, then ran towards the gangway just as the boat set sail
Surprises:
with so much space to think, thoughts seemed to get ever more confusing
Never been written in the English language before:
calamity stormed through the wannabe sailors vacuous mind
Poem/ story using one of the phrases above:
phrase: with so much space to think, thoughts seemed to get ever more confusing
Sitting atop an imaginary mountain she glared over the panorama of her mind's eye. or at least attempted to. car motors guzzled the winter air outside, street lamps spread their depressing gloom within her damp front room. no money and out of time for a real holiday, her only real relief was sit upright on this tenth arse armchair, straight back, and try to let the synapses relax.
lately the practice had become painful. the moment before the calm that normally descended was filled with a calamitous flood of thoughts streamed from the ever increasing nightmare that was her daily life. the nutcases at work, the staleness of single life, lackluster with seemingly no options to escape. how did it come to this?
it seemed that as the mind relaxed the vicious thoughts just accelerated. give space to angry chaos and it accelerates. the pounding of fearful sentences carved tiredness into her skull.
this was a stage in life when a meta-understanding was necessary. to step back, learn how to catch the runaway thoughts, tame them, slow their Brownian motion, direct them along paths etched to humanity in all its social wonders.
a train journey to a weekend away, sat upright on a beautiful hill looking over a verdant hills next to a tent filled with everything necessary for as many days as it will take. tomorrow morning she'll start. camp meal. turn in. dreams start.
moonlight bathes the tent. her eyes follow a single beam over the night. an owl hoots. relaxation spouts the cocophony from home. she persists. the beating drum of doubt takes hold. she tries to smooth the edges of her skull, let the deflections rebound without force, but that's mad it makes no sense. tiredness whells, she fights it back.
dawn breaks. she wakes, blood trickling from her nose. she's freezing.
Free writing for 5 minutes
Seed words (from the age of reason - sartre): added with a | deprecating, | harassed air: 'Of
petulance, this is the end of the story for you young man, your journey's end. the young man exclaimed, but i have only just started, why must it end now before I've set sail. because you are not fit for the voyage, you don't have your sea legs, where's your parrot, do you even know why you are leaving this port? calamity stormed through the wannabe sailors vacuous mind, who cares what this judgmental pilot says, I am going anyway, but wait, maybe he has a point, am i simply running into stormy waters, towards another port where nothing will have changed. doubt streamed from the Portishead song that had chimed in his mind too many times in those dark days a few months ago. every word that rebounded from the corners of his mind seemed to hurt, with so much space to think, thoughts seemed to get ever more confusing. he looked up, punched the pirate in the face, stole his parrot, and hat for good measure, then ran towards the gangway just as the boat set sail. looking back as water stretched between him and his decision he could see nothing. the pirate had disappeared, the port seemed bland, and there was no proportionate drama on this vessel, his new home.
Energy:
he looked up, punched the pirate in the face, stole his parrot, and hat for good measure, then ran towards the gangway just as the boat set sail
Surprises:
with so much space to think, thoughts seemed to get ever more confusing
Never been written in the English language before:
calamity stormed through the wannabe sailors vacuous mind
Poem/ story using one of the phrases above:
phrase: with so much space to think, thoughts seemed to get ever more confusing
Sitting atop an imaginary mountain she glared over the panorama of her mind's eye. or at least attempted to. car motors guzzled the winter air outside, street lamps spread their depressing gloom within her damp front room. no money and out of time for a real holiday, her only real relief was sit upright on this tenth arse armchair, straight back, and try to let the synapses relax.
lately the practice had become painful. the moment before the calm that normally descended was filled with a calamitous flood of thoughts streamed from the ever increasing nightmare that was her daily life. the nutcases at work, the staleness of single life, lackluster with seemingly no options to escape. how did it come to this?
it seemed that as the mind relaxed the vicious thoughts just accelerated. give space to angry chaos and it accelerates. the pounding of fearful sentences carved tiredness into her skull.
this was a stage in life when a meta-understanding was necessary. to step back, learn how to catch the runaway thoughts, tame them, slow their Brownian motion, direct them along paths etched to humanity in all its social wonders.
a train journey to a weekend away, sat upright on a beautiful hill looking over a verdant hills next to a tent filled with everything necessary for as many days as it will take. tomorrow morning she'll start. camp meal. turn in. dreams start.
moonlight bathes the tent. her eyes follow a single beam over the night. an owl hoots. relaxation spouts the cocophony from home. she persists. the beating drum of doubt takes hold. she tries to smooth the edges of her skull, let the deflections rebound without force, but that's mad it makes no sense. tiredness whells, she fights it back.
dawn breaks. she wakes, blood trickling from her nose. she's freezing.
Free writing for 5 minutes
Seed words (from the age of reason - sartre): added with a | deprecating, | harassed air: 'Of
petulance, this is the end of the story for you young man, your journey's end. the young man exclaimed, but i have only just started, why must it end now before I've set sail. because you are not fit for the voyage, you don't have your sea legs, where's your parrot, do you even know why you are leaving this port? calamity stormed through the wannabe sailors vacuous mind, who cares what this judgmental pilot says, I am going anyway, but wait, maybe he has a point, am i simply running into stormy waters, towards another port where nothing will have changed. doubt streamed from the Portishead song that had chimed in his mind too many times in those dark days a few months ago. every word that rebounded from the corners of his mind seemed to hurt, with so much space to think, thoughts seemed to get ever more confusing. he looked up, punched the pirate in the face, stole his parrot, and hat for good measure, then ran towards the gangway just as the boat set sail. looking back as water stretched between him and his decision he could see nothing. the pirate had disappeared, the port seemed bland, and there was no proportionate drama on this vessel, his new home.
Kennings
A kenning (Old Norse kenning [cʰɛnːiŋg], Modern Icelandic pronunciation [cʰɛnːiŋk]) is a circumlocution used instead of an ordinary noun in Old Norse and later Icelandic poetry. For example, Old Norse poets might replace sverð, the regular word for “sword”, with a compound such as ben-grefill “wound-hoe” (Egill Skallagrímsson: Höfuðlausn 8), or a genitive phrase such as randa íss “ice of shields” (Einarr Skúlason: ‘Øxarflokkr’ 9). The term kenning has been applied by modern scholars to similar figures of speech in other languages too, especially Old English.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning
Examples:
bear : bee wolf : beowulf
blood : battle sweat
corpse : raven harvest
chieftain or king : breaker of rings
eyes : brow stars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kennings
My own:
computer : mind's work horse
sky : gaseous ceiling
car : wreaking wrecker
Interesting parallel:
In cognitive linguistics, metonymy refers to the use of a single characteristic to identify a more complex entity and is one of the basic characteristics of cognition. It is common for people to take one well-understood or easy-to-perceive aspect of something and use that aspect to stand either for the thing as a whole or for some other aspect or part of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenning
Examples:
bear : bee wolf : beowulf
blood : battle sweat
corpse : raven harvest
chieftain or king : breaker of rings
eyes : brow stars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_kennings
My own:
computer : mind's work horse
sky : gaseous ceiling
car : wreaking wrecker
Interesting parallel:
In cognitive linguistics, metonymy refers to the use of a single characteristic to identify a more complex entity and is one of the basic characteristics of cognition. It is common for people to take one well-understood or easy-to-perceive aspect of something and use that aspect to stand either for the thing as a whole or for some other aspect or part of it.
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