The Subtle Landscape

aka Synchronicity?

July 25, 2008

Hard, really, to find physics any less weird than most religions – at least once past robe and sandals expectations. Example? How about Bell’s Theorem.

Remember how nothing can move faster than the speed of light? That if a star blows up in a galaxy many light years distant, it would be impossible for us here on earth to know anything at all about the event until its light reached someone’s eyeballs some millions of years down the road?

OK, now one would thus suppose that if something happens here, there could be no instantaneously connected event over there. Whether across the room or in that other galaxy. Locality they call it. Must be present to win. That is what the theory of relativity holds.

Well an aspect of quantum physics holds that there can indeed be “spooky action at a distance” as Einstein put it. That part of the theory is what caused him (with two colleagues) to write “Can Quantum-Mechanical Description of Physical Reality be Considered Complete” in 1935. He never did buy in.

Quantum theory was developed before there were means by which to test many aspects of it. But a theorem developed by John Stewart Bell in 1964 and experiments in particle physics since have shown that an event here can in fact be subtly entwined with one way over there.

Physicist Brian Greene makes an analogy using dice. An identical pair is separated – one goes to Vegas and one to Monte Carlo. They are repeatedly thrown at exactly the same time. If ‘entwined’ they somehow always come up the same. No one has yet figured out how or why.

David Harrison, a professor at the University of Ontario commented in an essay that: “Bell’s Theorem is the most profound discovery of science… not just physics, but all of science”. At the end he notes that it would force Einstein to accept Quantum Physics were he still alive.

And as Greene writes in his book The Fabric Of The Cosmos: “Numerous assaults on our conception of reality are emerging from modern physics… Of those that have been experimentally verified, I find none more mind-boggling than the recent realization that our universe is not local.”

Jeesh.

Posted in Cosmology | 1 Comment »

Bell’s Theorem

July 18, 2008

An old guide with features as sharp and chiseled as the rock ledge upon which he sat stared into the void. His much younger companion ministered his smooth hands with tape and tincture of benzoin.

Higher up, the youth, a “guide aspirant”, allowed as how the elder moved rather well for his age. Indeed, he had so far been impressed. There was no retort or response but for the crunch of rice cakes and gurgle of water from the canteen – water which had been scooped from the clear cold stream far below.

Long before sunset the guide had prevailed upon the youth to take advantage of the broad ledge traversing both walls of the huge dihedral they were ascending. Protestations as to the waste of yet available light were left echoing alone.

Moreover, though the ledge on one side was flat and smooth, the other was roughly castellated. The youth had remarked upon this fact and the related possibilities for a comfortable night. To his then further dismay, the old guide insisted that they both watch the moon from amongst the blocks.

Just after dawn, there was a terrible sound from high above. Covering his head and face with his hands, the youth pressed himself to the back of the ledge and behind the now welcome hunks of orange granite.

Thick with the smell of damnation, the dust cloud slowly cleared as the young man peered between his fingers to see the old man unmoved and beyond him unweathered rock where the opposite ledge had for millennia been.

Posted in climbing, Cosmology, Literature | 1 Comment »

Can You Hear Me?

July 11, 2008

Ever see The Perfect Storm? Remember near the end when it’s clear the end is near and the character played by Mark Wahlberg screams into the storm over the raging sea: “Christina? Christina, can you hear me? I don’t know if you can, but I’m talking to ya, baby. Do you know how much I love you? I loved you the moment I saw you. I love you now, and I’ll love you forever. No goodbye. There’s only love, Christina. Only love.”

And then after the storm, after Bobby (Wahlberg’s character) and his colleagues have all perished, and after the memorial service, Christina recounts a recurring dream in which “all of a sudden there he is. That big smile…” And he repeats the above word for word. “And then he’s gone. But he’s always happy when he goes. So I know he’s gotta be okay. Absolutely okay.”

Sebastian Junger writes in the introduction to the book that “No dialogue was made up”. So while the film is largely true to the book the last words to leave Bobby’s mouth in the movie are fiction, but Christina’s dream not. No matter what, cool bit of antiphony, right?

The day after the last time I saw the movie, I read a note in Outside magazine about a book by Maria Coffey: Explorers of The Infinite which asked: “What is it with extreme athletes and paranormal experiences?”

Had to buy the book. Found it fascinating. Coffey punctuates her work with views and explanation of mainstream science, but it is clear that she believe that there is indeed something else going on.

During the course of reviewing historical accounts of and numerous interviews with folks living life on the edge: “I became increasingly convinced that extreme adventurers break the boundaries of what is deemed physically possible by pushing beyond human consciousness into another realm.”

She quotes Krishnamurti: “A complex mind cannot find out the truth of anything, it cannot find out what is real – and that is our difficulty. From childhood we are trained to conform, and we do not know how to reduce complexity to simplicity. It is only the very simple and direct mind that can find the real, the true”.

Coffey tells the story of a couple who followed, on foot, a caribou herd for months and hundreds of miles way up in the Yukon. Alone and vulnerable, they fell into rhythm with the pace of the life of the animals. Some weeks in, they both began having dreams. The dreams began coming true. “Heuer and Allison believe it was the rigors of the journey that led to their dreams and the other inexplicable events that began to unfold.”

The identical twin British mountaineer brothers, Adrian and Allan Burgess provide several fascinating anecdotes. In one, Adrian, who didn’t often remember dreams and hadn’t thought about a certain dead alpinist friend for quite some time was visited by her in his sleep during early stages of an attempt on Nanga Parbat. “Adrian, you’re with the wrong people, get the fuck out of there” she told him. He was shaken and did leave. Shortly thereafter the team was hit by an avalanche.

It’s not all dreams. There’s intuition. “Jung described intuition as the perception of realities that are unknown to the conscious mind.” Marlene Smith says: “Intuition is about our body translating the energy it picks up, animals listen to those physical messages, but most humans reason them away”. Among other examples, Coffey cites evidence of unusual activities of some animals and primal people that spared them death from the Asian tsunami in December 2007.

In 1985 a mixed Spanish-Polish team of alpinists attempted Nanga Parbat. They communicated in English over their two way radios. During the descent there was a terrible storm and all “felt near death”. After safely reaching base camp, they listened to the recordings of their conversations and were amazed that they were all speaking in their native languages – unintelligible to each other. Yet during the actual event they understood one other perfectly.

There are many more stories and much hypothesizing, but it’s hard at the very least to disagree with British climber John Porter who said: “I think the starting point for any sort of weirdness is life itself. If we’re here, then it seems to me that anything is possible.”

After all, without even having to wade through the several bewildering mainstream explanations of the origin (or lack thereof) of our universe, it interesting to note that physicists do agree that the universe is made up of: 4% matter as we know it; 22% dark matter that we maybe know something about; and 74% something else yet to be determined.

Now that’s weird.

Posted in climbing, consciousness/psychology, Film, Literature | 1 Comment »

A robot couldn’t use a Ouiji Board, much less dream one up.

July 5, 2008

In the Science Times section of the Jun 3, 2008 NYT there was an interesting series of predictions given by futurist Ray Kurzweil. He has a decent track record and now posits that: solar power will be economical in ten years; soon there will be a drug that will let you eat whatever you want, and by 2050 “humans and/or machines [will] start evolving into immortal beings with ever-improving software”.

Most interestingly, he predicts that by 2020 or so, with new tools including nanotechnology, gene sequencing, and brain scans etc, we will be “adding computers to our brains and building machines as smart as ourselves”.

Another interesting fellow, V. S. Ramachandran does not agree. He is a neuroscientist with impressive range having done research and written fascinating books about phantom limbs and consciousness; is (or was) on the board of directors of the San Diego Museum of Art in La Jolla; and lectured widely about art, perception, and the brain. (Including at the National Council for Education of Ceramic Arts!)

Ramachandran allows that a thinking feeling machine might one day be possible, but not a reverse engineered brain. “My colleague Francis Crick used to say that God is a hacker, not an engineer. You can do reverse engineering, but you can’t do reverse hacking.”

I agree with Dr. Ramachandran. Think about it. An immortal man/robot hybrid would not have thoughts about sex or death and since the primordial soup, evolution of life on the planet has been guided by pursuit of the former and avoidance of the latter. Still is: look at any billboard.

Furthermore, it’s the incredibly inscrutable array of connections and cross connections that has led to the invention of the wheel, penicillin, thermos bottles, crepes suzette, the push-up bra, and everything else. Even experts can’t account for all the stuff they come up with.

For example, Irvin Yalom begins his book Existential Psychotherapy with an anecdote about a cooking class in which he and several friends had enrolled. After repeated failures at home, he went back to the school to watch again.

He hadn’t originally noticed that the chef did more than simply follow a recipe. She would taste, readjust, and even incorporate afterthoughts. Thus, before even beginning to really convey his thoughts about existential psychodynamics, he admitted that while “Formal texts, journal articles, and lectures portray therapy as precise and systematic, … and a careful rational program… I believe deeply that when no one is looking, the therapist throws in the “real thing”.

(BTW, the book is really interesting and his selection of cookware provocative: “The existential position emphasizes a different kind of basic conflict: neither a conflict with suppressed instinctual strivings nor one with internalized significant adults, but instead a conflict that flows from the individual’s confrontation with the givens of existence… Death – Freedom – Existential Isolation – Meaninglessness. )

Or to come at it from an entirely different perspective: in the June 21 edition of the Wall Street Journal, billionaire financier George Soros credited his success to his backaches. “I would say that I basically have survived by recognizing my mistakes. I very often used to get backaches due to the fact that I was wrong. When I make the right decision, the backache goes away.

As a final example of the irreplicability of the gray matter in our skull I’m reminded of an issue of the New Yorker a few years back. In it were an interview with Bill Gates and an article by Oliver Sacks about Temple Grandin, the autistic veterinarian who says she feels like an “anthropologist on Mars”. It was impossible to read the two pieces and not recognize characteristics and mannerisms of each in the other.

Like it or not, we’re dang complex. Maybe unfigureoutable.

Posted in consciousness/psychology | 3 Comments »

Dang, I guess that makes me a rainmaker…

June 27, 2008

Amazing. After just having remarked about what a great magazine is the Economist, the very next issue carried a short bit about my father’s first cousin! The interview was shorter than a haiku, but cool just the same.

It had to do with the terrible flooding here in Iowa. “Surveying his farm [with the reporter, he] saw glistening pools where corn stalks should have been. Where the water had receded the earth was muddy, dotted by feeble plants. ‘I consider us lucky’… Much of his farm has survived. Others have seen their land almost totally submerged.”

When I called out to ask if he was signing autographs, his wife answered and paused at first. She hadn’t seen the article. But, someone had called from town a few days back and asked if it’d be ok for a reporter from NYC to stop out…

They’d agreed to help, but with some concern. They’d been interviewed before about life on the farm and the experience had done little but reinforce their innate reticence. One’s life should speak for itself.

I read the bit to her. She said they had been lucky, that the Lord had always been good to them.

Doesn’t all that make you wish your were a farmer? Had an intimate and interactive relationship with the earth? No BS, no whining, no spray, no bling.

Reminds me of a poem (and source of the name of this little digital acreage):

Subtle Signs

by Michael Carey – from his book The Noise The Earth Makes

Although they had worked for days

hardly a word was spoken between them –

just hand gestures and a waving

of arms. From tractor to truck,

from hillside to house,

these said what was needed.

His father, once, had called his uncle

a “terrible talker.” he knew, now, what

he meant; that sometimes over dinner

and beer, Uncle Al found a use

for words, making them dance

around the pudding and cranberry sauce

and fall down upon them

like a crazy invisible rain.

Helping his father and brother with harvest,

he learned to read the subtle

signs in the subtle landscape:

how nature speaks to those who listen,

and those who listen when she speaks

hardly speak at all.

Also just like last time, I am reminded of something Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard once said:

“You don’t see farmers as climbers. You see city people. Farmers don’t need to climb”

Posted in Family, Farming, Poetry | Leave a Comment »

And I thought it was because I am a Gemini…

June 20, 2008

Awesome! The Economist is such a great magazine! I just learned from reading the current issue (June 14 – 20 ) why my attention span is so short. Ahem. Among other things.

It’s about attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Those with ADHD are impulsive. They “have trouble concentrating on any task…they flit from activity to activity… tend to perform poorly in society [and] are prone to addictive and compulsive behavior”. C’est moi! Yo comprendo!

Turns out I owe my restlessness to nomadic ancestors.

Testing has shown that ADHD is a genetic condition. “It is associated with particular variants of receptor molecules for neurotransmitters in the brain”. Variant 7R of protein DRD4 has been shown to be associated with “novelty seeking, food and drug craving, and ADHD”.

The neurotransmitter here is dopamine which, as you may know, is associated with reward and pleasure. The thought is that people with ADHD are getting hits of dopamine (aka positive feedback) for behavior that seems inappropriate in today’s society.

How could this have come to be? Well, we’ve not long been desk jockeys and the sorts of things associated with ADHD might have well served our nomad and hunter-gatherer ancestors. Couch potatoes would not have fared well, would they?

Recent research in Kenya supports this hypothesis. The Ariaal people are historically nomadic. Those now among them with the variant receptor and who continue to wander were found to be “better nourished” than those without. By interesting contrast, those members of the group that had the variant but had settled down were worse than those without.

A further question is why, if important, the variant is found only amongst 20% of the population. Could be that the “effects are beneficial only when they are not universal”.

I buy that. Somebody’s got to poke sticks at snakes and do the peyote ceremonies etc while the rest keep the fire burning. And the latter would tolerate the presence of the former for only the briefest of intervals – eg long enough to drop off the day’s catch.

I’ve always felt like the odd one out. Now I understand. Everybody else is missing a gear.

(For some reason, this reminds me of something that Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard said in an interview that appears in the June/July issue of Businessweek Small Biz: “My favorite quote about entrepreneurship is that to understand an entrepreneur, you should study a juvenile delinquent”.)

Posted in consciousness/psychology, Evolution, Family | 1 Comment »

Almost always, the creative dedicated minority has made the world a better place – Martin Luther King

June 13, 2008

For me, it is not about the war in Iraq. The decision was made to go, we went, and we’re still there now. Arguing about whether or not we should have and who voted how is even worse than pandering, it is a waste of time.

That region – Istanbul to Calcutta – is the locus of the most grave threats (those of a political nature anyway) facing this planet today. All sorts of scenarios can be constructed wherein throw-weight is an important consideration and zealotry and sacred values make for scary hair triggers. An escalation by either side for whatever reason could lead to a level of turmoil heretofore unseen.

Amazingly, contemplation of the situation took my mind back to my youth. In the early sixties my mother drove my brothers and me through the deep south on our way to visit our grandfather in Florida. Didn’t really have to get that far from home to find the restrooms at gas stations labeled Men, Women, and Colored.

First time I saw three rooms so labeled we battered Mom with questions. Why separate? If they have to be separate, why aren’t there ‘Colored Men’ and ‘Colored Women’? Why is the ‘Colored’ sign hand scratched and the other two, well, regular? Consciousness raised, we looked around and asked other questions such as: “why are all the men in the chain gangs ‘negroes’?”

When Dad joined us at Grandpa’s house, there were adult conversations discussing race related protests, Rosa Parks, segregation, lynchings, and murders. The phrase: “there’s gonna be a bloodbath” really scared me. When we got back home I began to notice the similar if more subtle disparities. Took longer to realize that I wasn’t ‘lily white’ myself.

Didn’t think about it in 1968 but there was momentous paradox, incredible irony during those years in which we should all find hope. For while it was white European men who forcibly, violently enslaved black Africans several hundreds of years ago – thereby sealing a cruel fate for them and as well as for the continent left behind – the figure most associated with the mostly peaceful passing of the era was a black man.

There is hope again today. What must the leaders of non western nations, as well as the dispossessed, think when they see that a black man, with the middle name Hussein, has an excellent shot at being the president of the United States of America? I am about as far from being a statesman as my dog (no offense Sauger), but I think it matters big time.

Perception and words make all of the difference. We do have an embarrassment of riches in the back stories of both major candidates. But who, walking through the doors of difficult foreign capitals would be the most, well, disarming? How could it not be the articulate son of a white mother and black immigrant from Kenya?

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »

Freewheelin’? More like a stick in the spokes. A big stick…

June 6, 2008

Several weeks ago Terri Gross interviewed Suze Rotolo on NPR’s “Fresh Air”. Rotolo’s book: A Freewheelin’ Time has just been published. It recounts her relationship with Bob Dylan which began in 1961 when she was 17 and he 20. They appear together on the cover of the album “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan” which was his second studio album and held, among others, “Blowin in the Wind”.

The discussion, during the interview, of the song: “Boots of Spanish Leather” (from the album “The Times They are A-Changin’ 1964) induced me to listen to it again for the first time in many years. Rotolo called it a fictionalized version of her sabbatical from their relationship which took her not to Spain, but to Rome. She had become nearly overwhelmed by the attention and adulation attendant to Dylan’s rise in Greenwich Village.

The song is antiphonal alternating between first, the fictionalized Ms Rotolo with Dylan in response:

“Oh, I’m sailin’ away my own true love,

I’m sailin’ away in the morning.

Is there something I can send you from across the

sea,

From the place that I’ll be landing?

No, there’s nothin’ you can send me, my own true

love,

There’s nothin’ I wish to be ownin’,

Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled,

From across that lonesome ocean.

Oh, but I just thought you might want something

fine

Made of silver or of golden,

Either from the mountains of Madrid

Or from the coast of Barcelona.

Oh, but if I had the stars from the darkest night

And the diamonds from the deepest ocean,

I’d forsake them all for your sweet kiss,

For that’s all I’m wishin’ to be ownin’

That I might be gone a long time

And it’s only that I’m askin’,

Is there something I can send you to remember me

by,

To make your time more easy passin’.

Oh, how can, how can you ask me again,

It only brings me sorrow.

The same thing I want from you today,

I would want again tomorrow.

I got a letter on a lonesome day,

It was from her ship a-sailin’,

Saying I don’t know when I’ll be comin’ back again,

It depends on how I’m a-feelin’.

Well, if you, my love, must think that-a-way,

I’m sure your mind is roamn’.

I’m sure your heart is not with me,

But with the country to where you’re goin’

So take heed, take heed of the western wind,

Take head of the stormy weather.

And yes, there’s something you can send back to

me,

Spanish boots of Spanish leather.

In the recounting at least, Ms Rotolo’s departure seems to have been instinctual. Only after some reflection at sea does her emotional tone catch up to her position and does she realize how revitalizing a break promised to be – whatever the cost. In contrast, Dylan was pained and cognizant of possible ramifications of her journey from the moment she announced her intention to him.

His final response to her repeated request was an effort to ensure that she be fully conscious of him at least one last time. In searching for the proper pair of boots, she’d have to take her mind back to him and reconsider the nature of his body, soul, and spirit.

The song is both achingly beautiful as well as illustrative of Jung’s description of an artist: “Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. To perform this difficult office, it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being.”

Even though it must have been crystal clear to Mr. Dylan why his “own true love” had left, he was unable to restrain himself from putting the story out there for all the world to know. He does not evince bluster and swager like his besequined cod-pieced brethren. More like cauterized torment.

It’s Dylan alone on acoustic guitar. The repetitive pattern of his picking seems to procure the rasp of his voice like hot firing synapses do obsessive thought.

It’s unforgettable.

Posted in Music | 1 Comment »

A Wonderful Bird Is The Pelican

May 30, 2008

This is the time of year when white pelicans rest here in SE Iowa on their way north from winter break to their summer breeding grounds. They are one of this universe’s many paradoxes because while they are ungainly up close, they are preternaturally elegant in flight.

Regarding the proximate view, many will be familiar with this short poem by Dixon Merritt:

A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His bill can hold more than his belly can,

He can take in his beak,

Enough food for a week,

But I’m damned to see how the hell he can!

The brown pelicans look very similar to the white in silhouette, but differ in plumage, behavior, and range. The brown are frequently seen in small groups coasting smoothly over a southern shore. Spotting a fishy morsel they’ll fold their wings (looking like a hipped umbrella) and dive into the sea.

The white don’t dive, but oh do they soar. Individuals or small groups rise on thermals so high and with such a complete lack of apparent effort that they resemble lower case ‘t’s floating at the outer ranges of one’s field of vision. Larger groups closer to the ground form slowly pulsing or undulating chevrons.

Squadrons sometimes slowly describe circles in the sky suddenly changing from black to white and back depending upon their aspect to the sun. Large groups form gently rotating cylinders suspended in the air which bring to mind a friendly tornado in very slow motion.

I have no recollection of having ever seen them during my youth. Thus, every spring as they pass through these parts I have to re-convince myself that their visit is no freak of nature.

Reminds me of a passage in Robert Coles’ Spiritual Life of Children. The Harvard psychiatrist interviewed children of widely diverse religious and secular backgrounds for insights into their inner lives and world views. My favorite bit is of his time with an eight year old Hopi girl sitting outside her spare home high on a mesa.

As they talked, she noticed a pair of hawks soaring high above. Then silent, she followed their graceful flight until the raptors were out of sight and then said: “I guess they’ll find something to eat. I wish they were just going on a ride and not really hungry. I love when they glide, then stop, flap their wings, and continue gliding.”

The conversation then resumed for a time when of a sudden she stopped talking and “Her head turned about forty-five degrees to the left, she looked up – the hawks had returned. How had she known?”

Coles concludes: “Some young people go through intense visionary moments… These are times when a mix of psychological surrender and philosophical transcendence offers the nearest thing to Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith” I can expect to see”.

Do you recall having had such a moment at the ripe old age of eight? Or later? How likely can one be for those continuously perched in front of any sort of tube? Is there a cerebral analogue to Fast Food Nation and obesity? Remote Control Nation and, like, uh, uh, say what??

Posted in consciousness/psychology, nature, Religion | Leave a Comment »

Feed Your Head

May 23, 2008

Picasso once said that “Computers are useless – they can only give you answers”. True, they have enabled incredible productivity and played a large role in tremendous economic expansion. But Bill Gates would still be a geek without game (or a college degree) if he hadn’t asked: Software or hardware? Steve Jobs would still be a hippie if he hadn’t wondered “are these things just for nerds?”.

Staring into one’s screen, it is now awfully easy to be drawn mindlessly along. And spew out report after report without getting ‘out of the box’. You come up with the same garbage you would have without a computer – just faster or more frequently.

America’s first billionaire, shipping magnate Daniel Ludwig, thought about that and asked himself: “paperless office?”. He didn’t buy it and developed a massive project in Brazil to produce paper on a theretofore unheard of scale. He foresaw the reams you’ve “borrowed” from your office to feed the machine at home.

Artificial intelligence has a long way to go. It has no counterpart to the older parts of our brain – those controlling respiration, fight or flight, and lust for example. That neat stuff complete with its incredible cortical wrapper make quite the cosmic organ.

A tool kit comprised of only 1s and 0s, or circles and rectilinearity will be no help in discerning between cheese and mold or making lemonade from lemons or evaluating risk or associating truth and beauty. Or painting Les Demoiselles d’Avignon. (Or being a misogynist for that matter I quess.)

Gonna have to keep on thinkin’ – daydreaming at the very least…

Posted in Art, consciousness/psychology, Science | Leave a Comment »