Someone said to me "I can't see the light at the end of the tunnel", and I answered:
There is no light. Learn to love the tunnel. That is the only way. To look for the light is to find oneself stuck forever in becoming and never in being. It is to always try to be somewhere, something else - never to be here and what you are. It is as Yoda says, "Do, or do not. There is no try." It is the tunnel for you, and me, and everyone else. Learn to like the pulsing lights. Learn to love the speed and hugging the sides for speed. Be in the tunnel, or stop. There is no light.
=] I do mean that in a positive way, I assure you. I love my tunnel (most every day).
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
groovy
NOTE: quoting myself from here.
seed magazine: prime numbers get hitched
Short summary of the article - Mathematicians say to physicists: "We give you all these great tools, you give us nothing. When are you going to pull your weight?" Physicists reply: "We're working on it, but how can physics, which is about reality, contribute to the pure ideal world of math?" Enter one very brave physicist who notes there is a similarity between the patterns in prime numbers and the patters in electron states in atoms. Primes have always been known to show up in patterns. Anyone who has been through high school physics since 1960 know electrons orbit in "shells" (states) where they sit in relation to the nucleus (center) of the atom and that it takes energy (given or taken) to switch from one "shell" to another. Well, it seems that they have been able to use what they know about electrons to make actual verifiable predictions about prime numbers.
Why is this SOOOOOOOOO cool that it makes me tingle every time I say it????
Well, I bet many of you have heard of things like the "golden ratio". It's basically a pattern that you can use to show how things like a conch shell or sunflower will grow. But it was found in nature, and then analyzed. So nature showed this to us and then we brought it into math to analyze. In other words, nothing new was brought to math by it's discovery. The tools of math were just used to describe it.
With these primes and the atomic states, we actually have reality informing us on a completely, until now, abstract issue. Prime numbers have always thought to be something wholly unrelated to anything but the confines of math. If you recall the movie Contact, they are convinced that the message is from an intelligent life-form because it uses primes, and primes are something only intelligence could have used because it has no bearing on anything but the ideal constructs of mathematics - so says the scientists in the movie. But here we have a staggering connection showing that reality may connect to this prime concept in a very deep way.
Were we innately in touch with some deep part of the universe when we discovered, described and manipulated primes? Do we now start looking at all the "pure abstractions" and wondering if they are really just reflections of things we have not yet realized in the world around us? Does this point to a day when we see every thought ever had as part of the natural order because they are all entwined with phenomena at all levels of reality?
Maybe one or all of those questions are completely insane, but before this they were nonsense and now they may just have some standing.
What do you think?
seed magazine: prime numbers get hitched
Short summary of the article - Mathematicians say to physicists: "We give you all these great tools, you give us nothing. When are you going to pull your weight?" Physicists reply: "We're working on it, but how can physics, which is about reality, contribute to the pure ideal world of math?" Enter one very brave physicist who notes there is a similarity between the patterns in prime numbers and the patters in electron states in atoms. Primes have always been known to show up in patterns. Anyone who has been through high school physics since 1960 know electrons orbit in "shells" (states) where they sit in relation to the nucleus (center) of the atom and that it takes energy (given or taken) to switch from one "shell" to another. Well, it seems that they have been able to use what they know about electrons to make actual verifiable predictions about prime numbers.
Why is this SOOOOOOOOO cool that it makes me tingle every time I say it????
Well, I bet many of you have heard of things like the "golden ratio". It's basically a pattern that you can use to show how things like a conch shell or sunflower will grow. But it was found in nature, and then analyzed. So nature showed this to us and then we brought it into math to analyze. In other words, nothing new was brought to math by it's discovery. The tools of math were just used to describe it.
With these primes and the atomic states, we actually have reality informing us on a completely, until now, abstract issue. Prime numbers have always thought to be something wholly unrelated to anything but the confines of math. If you recall the movie Contact, they are convinced that the message is from an intelligent life-form because it uses primes, and primes are something only intelligence could have used because it has no bearing on anything but the ideal constructs of mathematics - so says the scientists in the movie. But here we have a staggering connection showing that reality may connect to this prime concept in a very deep way.
Were we innately in touch with some deep part of the universe when we discovered, described and manipulated primes? Do we now start looking at all the "pure abstractions" and wondering if they are really just reflections of things we have not yet realized in the world around us? Does this point to a day when we see every thought ever had as part of the natural order because they are all entwined with phenomena at all levels of reality?
Maybe one or all of those questions are completely insane, but before this they were nonsense and now they may just have some standing.
What do you think?
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