dreams and phase transitions

Dream - The wild bus ride; the invasion

2012-01-26T09:15:00.003-05:00

I was riding in a bus, empty except for myself and the driver. And he was some kind of maniac. He drove as wildly as possible, laughing at me as he did. He was obviously trying to scare me, out of sheer perversity, apparently, and enjoying every second of it. He was dressed like a "gangsta". There aren't usually seat belts in a bus like this, but I found some and buckled in, which made him laugh and drive faster. He careened up on a sidewalk to pass some stopped cars -- I thought for sure we would crash then, but we didn't -- and when he burst out on the other side, there were two cars that had joined him in the action, as if it were a race. He had to slam on his brakes to avoid hitting one. I was hoping there'd be a police car somewhere nearby to stop him, but there wasn't.

As awful as the ride was, it got me where I was going without injury. I hopped out of the bus as quickly as possible and found that I had ridden to a sort of vacation home. There was a main family inside who owned the house, and then a bunch of people who were staying there for a time. I recognized one of them as an old bigfooting buddy who was complaining that he'd been working too hard and couldn't get any sleep. There were also many pets in the house, including one large New Foundland -- which the owner said was small for its breed, though it was actually larger than a real New Foundland.

It was one of these, a Landseer New Foundland

I spent my time there recording songs, and was pleased to find that several of the people there were fine singers, including one lady who was very good. I had her try out a song my brother and I wrote and I thought she was awesome. I spoke to my brother by phone and had him listen in as she tried another take.

A second dream comes from my wife, who rarely has this sort of dream. In it, she and her whole extended family were staying at a beach resort. A couple of them told her that they intended to go home early, which made her a little sad. She spent some time on the beach, and noticed that our daughter was sitting very close to the edge of the ocean, and that a huge shark was there, half out of the water. Though it was obviously in distress and dying, it still had the energy to gnaw on our daughter's hand, but she didn't seem to notice.

A bit later on, my wife heard a loud sound and wondered what it could be -- was it an earthquake? An explosion? She ran outside with some of the family (a few of us were missing at this point) and saw that UFOs were coming down in the sky, sending down beams of energy which caused the explosions. She also saw a large robotic looking fellow parachuting down. She immediately thought that we were being invaded by aliens and at that point woke up.

Maybe not exactly like this..

These are two dreams on the same night by two different (but related) people. The similarities are pretty interesting -- both involve a vacation and both involve a stressful event, though the emphasis is different in each. I should point out that my wife never dreams about UFOs or anything like that. Instead, it's very much like a dream that I would have.

EDITED TO ADD -- it seems pretty obvious to me that you can draw a connection between the New Foundland from my dream and the alien invasion in my wife's dream, but that might not be so obvious to readers so let me draw that out for you:

Though we typically think of Columbus as the pointy tip of the spear that was Westward migration, it actually began with the Vikings and New Foundland. The settlements at New Foundland were small and not very successful, but the interaction between the Vikings and the natives there must have had an effect, even if what that was is not well understood (and sometimes hotly debated) now.

In the dream, I'm frightened by the size of the New Foundland, though the owner assures me it's a small one. But the dog turns out to be pretty friendly.

You can also connect the dog with the robot in my wife's dream -- where I see a large, but friendly dog, she sees a dangerous transformer-like machine of destruction.

Note I'm not saying that you need to do any of that connecting, only that you can.

LATER EDIT: I went looking for information on the Landseer because I had not heard of it before I found its picture on the web. It turns out it was named after a painter named Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, who painted this portrait:

A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society

That particular fellow was named Bob, and he "was found in a shipwreck off the coast of England. The dog found his way to the London waterfront where he became known for saving people from drowning, a total of twenty–three over the course of fourteen years."

That's pretty cool.

Recent dreams point to something big?

2012-01-23T10:25:00.003-05:00

As you may know, I frequently have dreams that tip me off to things that are coming. They aren't ever explicit, so there's the question of interpreting things and once you start that very subjective business, all questions of whether you can prove anything by them go out the window.

So I can't prove to you that these dreams of mine are any good at predicting things, but you may read this and keep it in the back of your mind just in case.

Several dreams now have all had the same actions in them, but seen from slightly different points of view. In each of them, I'm given the message that "a large weather event" is coming that will isolate my area from the rest of the country.

The imagery is of a flood so large that you can't possibly use the roads anymore outside of the town I live in.

Now, I don't take that literally because we are talking about dream images here. The roads are a symbol for your path in life, your goals and how you achieve them. If the roads are all flooded, then it isn't possible to achieve anything anymore.

In the same dreams, I get the message that the people in charge of serving lunch are going off duty.

In dreams, what you eat can represent the perks you get during your life. After all, it's not only schooling and learning, there are also pleasures and achievements to be had here in the material realm.

I've had this image before in other contexts -- the people who work behind the scenes know something is coming and they aren't doing their jobs anymore. These people are spiritual folk, not the living, and they may represent archetypes or subconscious energies, or really, just the denizens of the afterlife doing their jobs. Except they aren't doing them anymore.

You can see how both images taken together suggest that something big is coming my way, and it might represent something that happens to more people than just me.

If the dreams relate solely to me, then I expect some kind of debilitating health crisis or what have you. But certain images in the dream show me helping others to avoid the crisis, so I doubt it's about me in that sense.

So this post is my effort to help a little -- if it looks like a crisis is coming, don't say to yourself, "Oh, it won't really happen." Because the people in celestial service have gone off duty in expectation, and I don't think they normally do that. Put yourself in a safe situation and get ready to ride it out.

In dream language, weather isn't always a reference to actual weather, but to large-scale disturbances of some sort. So I can't tell what form this is going to take. But the indication is that it will happen fairly soon; within the year I'd say.

If you are going to be hard headed about it

2012-01-19T12:59:00.001-05:00

If you come here often, even after a long layoff by your ordinarily long-winded author, then more than likely you are seriously looking for the beastie. You suspect I know something about the fellow, even though I've never seen him.

In truth, I don't know the first thing about Mr. Beastie -- and I think we can pretty much agree nobody does, and that goes for whatever particular beastie you care to put in the role of Mr. Beastie.

I have been telling you to stop looking for the beastie for this reason -- we have no real idea what we are getting into.

During my layoff, I wondered why I should continue blogging about these matters. It seemed as if I'd put into print most of my thoughts, and if I'm not going to go out searching anymore, there's little that's new or original that I can add now.

Maybe there's one thing -- since you won't stop looking for the beastie, maybe I can advise you about how to protect yourself from the most obvious pitfalls -- chasms that at any rate I can see clearly but maybe they aren't so easy for you to see, because we are all looking in different places.

So here are a couple bits of advice I think could be useful.

1. Remember that you don't know the first thing about how the world really works. You may have beliefs -- most of us do -- but to really do this job right, you have to put those aside. You don't even know whether the world you see this morning is in fact the one you left when you went to sleep last night. (Have a look at Consistent Histories if you don't believe me.) We get enough Fortean evidence that the world we live in is bizarre that we should carry with us supreme doubts about our ability to suss out the reality of it all. The only thing we can really be sure of is that the world is weird.

2. You can't control the beastie or whether or not he's going to appear when you go looking, but you can control your own thoughts. One of the most common side effects of beastie interaction is extreme fear -- you need to know that it's going to happen and prepare yourself to, as much as you can, ignore it. What is being exposed here is the extent of our own psychological limits -- we are all xenophobes of the highest (lowest?) order. A fox crosses the road, and we say, "Ooo, a fox, how awesome!" A monkey-man crosses the road and we go slack-kneed with terror, even though said monkey-man might be about as interested in us as the fox was -- which is not at all, except to see how fast he can get away from us.

If we were familiar with bigfoot, say, seeing one would probably provoke a reaction similar to seeing a large bear. Yeah, fear is part of the reaction, but not mind-numbing fear. Add to this the factor that it's possible bigfoot is as intelligent as you are and probably not interested in eating you or rending you limb from limb, and the fear quotient might drop even further.

The guys in the silvery craft zipping around and hovering over your back-yard are, maybe, out doing a job. The ghost that taps your shoulder just might be a rather dull old fellow who you wouldn't think twice to ignore and pass by, after exchanging the barest of pleasantries, had he been living.

Or every one of these might be, and indeed probably are an intersection between your own consciousness and the strange way the universe parses out and processes information.

Or, hey, they could be demons from Hell.

The point is -- your preconceptions about them will get in the way of your noticing the very things that might help us to determine what they really are. Don't believe that you know anything about them, and don't let the fact that they are enigma's scare you beyond reason.

Of course, there will be fear. They are beasties after all.

If I were you, I'd avoid them. But if you are going to be hard headed about it, at least come back with some useful information. You'll go a long way toward doing that if you heed these two bits of advice.

This blog sucks!

2011-11-10T09:19:00.002-05:00

This is a screen capture of the stats for this blog over the last two weeks. For a while I was posting every day, even going so far as to write posts ahead and schedule them to post at a certain hour every day. I started that about Oct 31, which was after that slight spike the blog got from someone linking to an older post. As you can see, during the time that I actually posted a post a day, the readership was going down. Then I stopped, and the readership goes back up again!

It's not cause and effect -- and unless I'm inversely susceptible to "mysterious internet activity energies," my posting and visits to the blog aren't related at all. The truth is, eying that last number on the bottom there -- returning visits -- the blog really only has about a half dozen readers. The vast majority of the rest are people who come after a search for an image or a term that directs them here. These people rarely stay more than a second or two.

It took me a little while to figure out that almost all the people who are counted as visitors aren't actually reading the blog. I have pondered ever since what I should actually do -- is it worth it to keep writing something like this when it entertains so few people?

You have probably heard that writers write because they have to, not because they are rewarded for it. And I know that this is true. But it's also true that keeping a blog uses some of your energy, which you might spend elsewhere. And it smarts to do something and realize that you have come to be like the crazy person on the street corner shouting at the passersby who do their best to avoid making eye contact.

I don't need to be that guy..

Behind the music

2011-11-06T00:00:00.000-04:00

Some time ago, you might recall that I spoke of a dream I had that showed Lennon and McCartney had a collaborator that even they weren't perfectly well aware of. Here it is:

1-1-2009

I was watching John Lennon and Paul McCartney recording one of their hits, but I can’t remember which one now. There was a man there with them. He was tall, clean shaven, with short, reddish-blonde hair. He sang along with them as they recorded, and I thought to myself, “I never noticed his voice in that song before,” and it was like a revelation to me. He saw that they’d goofed one part and rewound the tape to that spot (you could see it on a computer screen, so it wasn’t period technology). He re-sang his part, but Paul and John didn’t join in. They looked confused by him. Then he stopped and had a vision, remembering how the song really went in the future. He said to them, “You will write a bridge to this song, but I’m not going to tell you what it is. I could show you because I can see it and hear it, how it will appear in the future. But it’s so easy. I don’t know which one of you will write it, maybe it will be Paul.” The two Beatles were really confused now. They seemed helpless, so that he took up a guitar and started playing the song to get them into it again, but accidentally showing the change as he did. Then he looked at John and Paul and realized that he knew what was going to happen to them. John especially seemed to want to know. The man decided not to tell them.

In my notes about the dream I mentioned that he had seemed German -- and I had the association with Nazi Germany. Something about him seemed ominous, though he was not especially evil or malevolent in the dream.

I just happened to run across a video from Pink Floyd's film, The Wall. It's the section with the song "Comfortably Numb," and I was suddenly struck by the ending of the video and how similar it was, to my mind, to the dream that I'd had.

In this case, there's no man sitting beside "Pink" in the limo, but he keeps picking at the skin on his face, until it starts to bubble and boil off him:

When he finally gets it all off, he reveals that inside is a man dressed something like a Nazi.

Later in the movie, you will see this character leading a sort of neo-nazi rally, but it's not very hard to just see this as an interpretation of a rock show. Perhaps the insight of the movie is that the nazi rallies and rock shows are related?

A much older Roger Waters in a similar outfit

So I had this dancing around in my head, thinking that it was interesting that image would be there.

Now I just noticed the lyrics to Foo Fighter's song Learn to Fly. Check out what jumps out of the first verse, but keep going along, keeping in mind the idea that sometimes the music made by popular artists might come from an outside source:

Run and tell all of the angels
This could take all night
Think I need a devil to help me get things right
Hook me up a new revolution
Cause this one is a lie
We sat around laughing and watched the last one die

I'm looking to the sky to save me
Looking for a sign of life
Looking for something to help me burn out bright
I'm looking for a complication
Looking cause I'm tired of trying
Make my way back home when I learn to fly high

I think I'm done nursing the patience
It can wait one night
I'd give it all away if you give me one last try
We'll live happily ever trapped if you just save my life
Run and tell the angels that everything's alright

I'm looking to the sky to save me
Looking for a sign of life
Looking for something to help me burn out bright
I'm looking for a complication
Looking cause I'm tired of trying
Make my way back home when I learn to fly high
Make my way back home when I learn to. . .

Fly along with me, I can't quite make it alone
Try to live this life my own (and)
Fly along with me, I can't quite make it alone
Try to live this life my own. . .

If we take the image of flight to refer to success in music, this whole song could be a rather plaintive call for influence from whatever it is in the sky -- spirits, aliens, whoever. Though the first verse seems pretty clear about the artist realizing that he needs "a devil to help me get things right."

Taking a look at the history of the Foo Fighters, isn't it rather interesting that "Learn to Fly" was their first big hit. Before this song was released, they hadn't had that sort of success that Dave Grohl must have been used to, having known such heights with Nirvana. Grohl was perhaps pretty "tired of trying" to match that by the time he got around to writing "Learn to Fly."

It may only be that this sort of thing is a way of artists acknowledging the unconscious element that fosters, supplements, and often even directs the creative process.

Or it may be something else..

Song Stories -- the "Cars" trio

2011-11-05T00:00:00.000-04:00

I wrote three songs last year which I thought of as inspired by The Cars.

They don't particularly sound like Cars songs, though. Which has taught me an important lesson -- even when I'm trying to rip someone off, I only wind up sounding like myself. And that is a good thing.

The first written probably sounds least like a potential Cars tune -- "It's all because of you." They lyrics intentionally use dream images as metaphors, but it's not particularly explicit about it. To make short work of it, it's about how toxic family relationships can scar you for life, if you let them.

I got no shoes on my feet
I got no rhythm, I can't dance to the beat
Feels like I'm falling into the fire
Can't get a handle on this strange desire

I can feel the heat in my veins
Can't stand here burning while I go insane
I don't know what.. I'm gonna do
And it's all because of you

It's all because of you
It's all because of you
It's all.. because of you
It's all because of you

There's got to be another way
Can't put my feelings out on display
I'm not like you, I ought to be
I'm not so good at getting what I needed

It's all because of you
It's all because of you
It's all.. because of you
It's all because of you

You know me, I'm like the tide
I got a lot of junk locked up inside me
I don't know what I'm gonna do
It's all come to this because of you

Some kind of monster in me tonight
I got no weapon I can bring to the fight
I got no shoes on my feet
I got no rhythm, I can't dance to the beat, no

It's all because of you
It's all because of you
It's all.. because of you
It's all because of you

Rhetorically, the song just blames someone and no solution is offered except in the negative -- "Can't put my feelings out on display" -- an attitude of which the song itself exists as a counter example. The secret to these things is that of course we have to put our feelings out on display, if for no other purpose than to see them in the light of day, because everything looks different out in the real world. The song has an evocative power of its own, but it is whiny and riddled with weakness. It's what you have to not do. Blaming others robs you of your power.

Now the dream images, in case you aren't familiar with them, include shoes, weapon, not being able to dance. The weapon is easy enough -- it represents your feeling of power in a given situation, and is related to teeth in this sense. Dancing is also easy -- it's a public expression of togetherness and not being able to dance exhibits a sense of alienation. The shoes, though, are interesting -- it's hard to tread your path without good shoes. As an article of clothing, shoes represent aspects we "take on" temporarily during our incarnation, in the same sense that we wear different clothes on different days. You will probably have had dreams that had to do with not having the right clothes or shoes for an activity, and these dreams speak of your preparation for the task at hand, whatever that might be. But shoes have a distinct function in helping to propel us in our chosen direction. Not having any shoes would represent not being able to tread the path, let alone being prepared for it.

Now back to the song and its sounds. I was pretty pleased with my production of this song -- it's clean and well articulated for the most part, though the mix may be unbalanced, pretty much an inevitability now that my left ear is suspect. The bass here is the Korean made Tobias. You can really hear the wood through the Bartolini Soapbars here. I think this song shows the bass off at its best.

The guitar fills were very interesting for me, because I just started playing them. During the section before the final "lead" I just started tapping the strings instead of strumming and it sounds very nice there.

I put lead in quotes because none of those lines are proper leads, they are just melodies stated and restated.

Overall I'm pretty happy with the tune.

The second song in the trio is All I want is to be with you. This one comes a bit closer to the idea of a Cars tune, except for the irritating repeating guitar in the left ear. I'd definitely tone that down in a remix. But even this one sounds more like a song from before the Cars existed than a proper Cars tune, with the vaguely Led Zeppelin bridge and instrumentation. The lyrics are pretty straightforward pop, though I will say that I conceived it as about the imagined audience and not about a girl. So the song is about what I would like to get out of my creative endeavors.

It doesn't take paparazzi at the window
I don't like a throng
It doesn't take an airtight alibi
I'll never be that wrong

It doesn't take a million bucks
I never want to be your ego centered self destructor
It doesn't take a fast car
don't want to pay the gas and I don't need to go that far

All I want is to be with you

I don't need a whole lot of prized possessions
I don't need fine clothes
And I don't need a 100 different pairs of shoes
All I need is just one thing I know

All I want is to be with you

Oh yeah
Feel like you're calling me home, yeah

I like to feel you next to me
And all I want is to be with you

I don't need artificial stimulation
I don't get that tight
All I know is the secret of anticipation is
If it feels right it feels right

All I want is to be with you

Pretty simple and plaintive, I'd say. There's a missed opportunity in the "All I know is the secret of anticipation" lyric. Those last two lines are throw away quality, but I've not been able to replace them with something better.

The last song of the trio, "If you don't have love" sounds least like a Cars tune, and continues with the critique of fame and fortune launched in the previous song.

What good is having fortune and fame
what good is being good at the game
what good that everyone knows your name
if you don't have love?

What good is having heap loads of power
what good is being man of the hour
what good is all the food you devour
if you don' t have love

Who would think that I might be mistaken
it's evident and plain for all to see
but the simple truths are easier forsaken
I would think you would have to agree
look at all the unhappy people

Listen you can take it from me
It's as simple as simple can be
there is no way to be happy
if you don't have love

Who would think that I might be mistaken
it's evident and plain for all to see
the simple truths are easier forsaken
I would think you would have to agree
look at all the unhappy people

What good to wear a crown on your head
what good is knowing everything said
what good is having breakfast in bed
if you don't have love

If I had it all to do over again, I'd sing it less with that strange inflection. I don't know if I'll ever get to recording a new vocal for it, at least with me singing, because it's such a chore to get my vocals right.

Surely you have realized that this might be the case by now..

It's a frustration for me, because I can hear the songs, but I can't really sing them. And I've not been very successful finding anyone to sing them for me. This is partly because I don't try very hard, and partly because of the nature of musical collaborations. Songwriters are plentiful these days, and most are only interested in doing their own stuff. Also, musicians generally hear the mistakes in a demo and stop listening pretty quickly if they hear too many, so it's in your interest to do the best job you can if you want to attract someone into a project. So my natural shyness and habitual sloppiness are a double whammy for me in this regard.

I do recall dreaming once that someone advised me to stop singing on my songs. Heh. I probably should have taken that advice! But I hear the songs with the lyrics and singing already intact. I feel like it's my job to get them out into the air.

Probably my favorite bit about this last song is the way it ends. I love that emphatic BAM at the end.

Song Stories -- Suburban Tragedy

2011-11-04T00:00:00.000-04:00

This was another song that went through quite an evolution before it became what you hear now.

Suburban Tragedy

It began as a short little song I was writing for my son Sam, which was to be called "Dinosaurs." I wanted it to be proggy from the beginning, but things did not go well for that iteration of the tune. I got stuck for lyrics, and the sounds I chose were awful -- I actually had a falling bomb sound as an asteroid strike for the end of the dinosaurs, which came near the beginning of the song.

If that sounds intriguing, trust me, in execution it was terrible. My son was disappointed when I didn't finish the song, but I was stuck in a bad place for it. I wrote this at a time when I was working with a keyboard player on a project of his but for which I was contributing some material. I felt his song selections were too idiosyncratic and, in a word, wimpy, and that we should drop many of them and attempt to write some new material. Since he and I were both into progressive rock, I thought we should focus on prog tunes and I got busy trying to write some. The fact the subject matter was dinosaurs and the keyboard sounds I used were so awful kept him from giving this song a second glance.

This song snippet also came from that time period, which must have been around 2003 or so I think.

Brighter than the sun (fragment)

That one provoked some interest, but he could not be moved from his planned project. I think he was a perfectionist and once he started something, he could not be satisfied if he didn't finish it.

I, on the other hand, will abandon projects with, well, abandon, if I come to think they aren't worth the time I'm investing in them.

Interestingly enough, I had a dream at this time. In it I was in a long line with other people, and the line was moving, but I was trying to pick up some crayon drawings that were strewn about on the floor. I could see that I was going to lose my place in line if I didn't just let them go, and they weren't worth saving anyway.

And that is a good description of that project. The keyboardist got angry with me for trying to introduce new songs to the project and stopped answering emails for a while, which gave me a graceful exit point.

Now back to "Suburban Tragedy," which was still a song about dinosaurs at this time, and I was pretty unhappy with it.

Later on, after I had left the project with the keyboardist, while thinking about the tune I heard the lyrics, "She could never have the things she wanted," over the melody, and it was a different vocal line than what was on there at the time. I don't think a copy of that original tune survives, and I don't remember it. But I was intrigued about why she couldn't have these things that she wanted. I put my pen to paper, and in a short while I had the first two verses pretty well mapped out.

She could never have the things she wanted
The things she dreamed could never be
On account of cruel reality
So she waits like one looking in the window
Wishing for what she cannot have, [yeah]

He could not stand his braindead day job
And so he'd retreat into his own world alone
When conflict arises, as it will
[Oh] it goes badly

And that's where things stood for a while. I knew that it needed something else and I wasn't sure what. So I put it aside for a while, and during that time I sold the bass I had originally recorded it with and bought a Rickenbacker 4001c64S. Then I "heard" a new middle section. I thought it was brilliant and that it suited the song, and brought it to a new place. There's just the Rick, a Gibson guitar, and drum loops behind the voice here. The keyboards have all dropped out, but in context, you don't notice that.

They can't agree to disagree
And then she tells him how things will be
He doesn't listen, he turns away
Loses track of time in video games

People have told me that they don't like the falsetto singing in this section of the song, but I felt like the song needed to sound precarious and delicate there. I think a better singer could pull it off without it sounding bad.

Now here is where all that work I had done on the original prog tune worked for me. I had some variations on the main theme mapped out, which I thought would actually serve well in a story song like this one. And it is still vaguely proggy even after the changes. To me the song's structure is kind of a new thing, though I'm very sure someone else, probably lots of people, have done this sort of thing before. Certainly it's a spiritual successor to such songs as the Beatles "She's Leaving Home."

[Oh] she could not believe his callousness
And he thought that she was thing obsessed
[Oh] she wondered whether he was sane, yeah
To him everything was such a game

They finally came to a decision
They split in two and never spoke again
Because they could not see it standing right before them
Thus was ended yet another sweet suburban dream

The return that begins with "she could not believe.." is the variation on the main theme that I was talking about. It's been so long now, I can't even remember what made me think to do that, but I had planned it from when the song was about dinosaurs, and now it fit perfectly after the middle section. So the song, written over three distinct periods, sounds like a unified whole, as if it had existed already and was simply waiting to be recovered from the "Dinosaurs" disaster.

Instrumentally, I did a lot of things in this song that I hadn't done before. The extended acoustic fills and leads, though not technically difficult, were not something I had tried often. I can think of only one previous song where I did something similar. It's an example of that "Holy Ghost" descending on me, because I played those parts pretty quickly, without thinking much about it.

The bass line is interesting because it uses two different basses, at least. It started with my first Warwick Corvette 5, which was such a versatile and beautiful instrument. I got rid of it because it hurt my left hand to play it on account of the larger neck a 5 string requires, but truth be told I was getting used to it by the time I sold it. The 2nd bass was the Rickenbacker. That was a magnificent instrument and I'd love to have one of them again. It truly gets the tone you want it to, but it costs way too much for a hobbyist like me to justify, so I sold it for what I originally paid for it (less shipping) and replaced it with another Warwick Corvette 5. By this time I had realized my mistake in having let it go. The new Warwick seems to have a slightly thinner neck and I've gotten used to it now. It's truly a tone monster. It can sound gritty and growly, sort of like a Rick, and also smooth and clean, or anything in between.

I was quite proud of this song when I was done, though I recognized that I couldn't really do it justice vocally. I'd love to re-record it with a full band and good vocalist. I think there's a lot of good still buried in it that could be revealed by a better treatment.

I also have considered making this song's structure a form and using it again on different tunes. One thing I find attractive is that there's no chorus, but it still has hooks. I like the way the cello starts the theme and then the guitar takes it -- it's this recurring figure that serves as the "chorus" of the song. None of the words are repeated and I'm very attracted to this, because the repetition of words in a song gets pretty boring to me. You may find that surprising, given how often I'll repeat a chorus at the end of a song..

Song stories -- Solar System Man

2011-11-03T00:00:00.000-04:00

Often a song comes to me out of thin air - I hear it and I have to run and record it before I forget it. But there's another way songs happen, too. Your hands find them. This song, "Solar System Man," is one of those.

I have tried to communicate how strange songwriting is. It feels like something is channeled through you, because when you are in the zone, you can play things that you can't when you are not. "Solar System Man" is an illustration of this, too. I didn't have to work very hard to get the guitar parts down, such as they are. A real guitarist would do a much better job of what I am trying to do, I admit. But there's still something to it.

It even happens with bass playing -- maybe especially with bass playing. If I pick up a bass and just start playing it, I don't even know what to do with it. I didn't learn how to play that way, I learned by putting a record on the turntable and figuring out songs note for note. And now, when I construct bass lines, I have to hear them in my head, and then figure them out note for note.

Except when something happens -- something that I have called, "having the Holy Ghost of bass playing descend upon me." This only happens when I am recording, but when it does, I suddenly can play anything and it fits the song.

Somewhere, something inside me knows a lot more about playing the bass than I do consciously.

Now, let's talk about "Solar System Man." It started out as a simple pop thing, but I wasn't satisfied with it that way. For one thing, the comic book, sci-fi theme doesn't fit pop very well. For another it just seemed to say, "prog me up!" So I did, in three stages. First, I constructed the intro, focusing on the vocals but doing some vaguely proggy things with the drums and bass. After I had this installed, I put it aside for a while. When I came back to it, I realized that there were notes that I should emphasize with the instrumentation and sing over that in a different way. I put it aside again, though at some point I figured out one version of the backing vocals and changed it to the "na na na" that you hear now. In one final fit of prog rage, I constructed the middle section, and layered a new backing vocal part on top of the original. When I finally re-record the song, those will be combined into one line, instead of being a collage of two as they are now, because it'd be a nice and different backing vocal thing, rather than two somewhat familiar vocal things mashed together.

The lyrics of the song came at me quickly. It's a humorous song in many ways, but also a bit sad. Here's how I wrote it up, with the chord changes of the original:

Solar System Man
in CMaj (Amin)
by DB Donlon
[verse 1]
Am Am7 Am6 F6(no 5)
Solar System Man has a plan to save the world
Am Am7 Am6 F6(no 5)
But nobody hears him because he talks too low
Am Am7 Am6 F6(no 5)
All around him he can see
Am Am7 Am6 F
People going on with their lives as if nothing were happening

[chorus]
G Bb C
Solar System Man has a plan
Bb G
But there's no one listening
G Bb G
He tries to save the world
Bb G
From decomposing
G Bb C
Ah -------------
Bb G
Solar System Man
G Bb C
Ah -------------
Bb
Solar System
Am Am7 Am6 Am(aug)
man..

[verse 2]
Am Am7 Am6 F6(no 5)
Solar System Man knows the time is growing short
Am Am7 Am6 F6(no 5)
He knows that his is an approach of last resort
Am Am7 Am6 F6(no 5)
One lonely tear travels toward his chiseled chin
Am Am7 Am6 F
All the power to save the world trapped within

[chorus]
G Bb C
Solar System Man has a plan
Bb G
But there's no one listening
G Bb G
He tries to save the world
Bb G
But it's not happening
G Bb C
Ah -------------
Bb G
Solar System Man
G Bb C
Ah -------------
Bb
Solar System
Am Am7 Am6 Am(aug)
man..

[Vocal Bridge]
C C6(no5) C C6(no5)
Solar System Man would like to settle down
C C6(no5) Dm7
Have some kids, get a job and drive an SUV
C C6(no5) C C6(no5)
Solar System Man is feeling old and tired
C C6(no5) Am
Nodding off to sleep with the tv on..
F
Watching reruns

[Chorus]

G Bb C

Solar System Man has a plan
Bb G
But there's no one listening
G Bb G
He tries to save the world
Bb G
But it's not happening
G Bb C
Ah -------------
Bb G
Solar System Man
G Bb C
Ah -------------
Bb
Solar System
C6(no5) C6(no3)
Man
C6(no5) C6(no3)
Solar System Man
C6(no5) C6(no3)
Solar System Man
Dm7
Won't stop trying to save the
Am
World

The end doesn't go like that anymore and there's an instrumental intro and an extended instrumental bridge now too.

I got the name Solar System Man from my young son Alex, who must've been three or four when he came up with it. As the music was coming to me, I imagined this comic book character -- an alien, as it happens, but so is Superman so nothing new there -- who attempts to save the earth from our mismanagement, but because we can't hear him, and his own lassitude, he fails (though he doesn't give up, he just wants to.)

But the song really isn't about some alien dude, it's about me, and my inability to translate the creative vision that I have into something people would pay attention to.

Song stories

2011-11-02T21:13:00.000-04:00

Going back over these old songs has made me remember quite a few things I'd have forgotten otherwise. It seems music either holds or unlocks memories -- which is pretty interesting.

Returning to my chronology -- and realizing that few people are going to be interested in the actual songs, let me sketch out what memories they evoke.

Another early song is See You Again, which comes from c1989 or so, give or take a couple of years. I was able to get my brother to play guitar on that one too, though that version is not the one you can hear. I was thinking about this, and I can see the bedroom of the house in Charlottesville where I lived where I was writing an earlier song, "Not at This Address," which my brother put a lead guitar part on. I think this one was written and recorded there too. That was back in the days of the 4 track recorder, incidentally, so there weren't that many tracks to play around with for me and I couldn't do a good job of cutting and pasting guitar parts if I couldn't play them, which I never could back then. So I was always relieved when he would take an interest in putting down some guitars. I couldn't figure out what it was that prompted him to want to do it or not to want to do it, because he was pretty variable about it.

He's older than me by about 18 months, and I am pretty sure it came as a shock that I was born. I think being parsimonious with his guitar was one way of getting back at me for the egregious injustice that my birth was to him. I didn't know, or even suspect that at the time, but I had a dream some years ago that made the issue much more plain to me. Dreams always come into it somewhere for me.

In this one, I had my baby son Alex with me near a shore line. My brother came along, and somehow he got my son from me and stepped onto a piece of land that broke away from where I was and floated out into the water, receding rapidly. The look on his face was a mix of naked loathing and triumph.

How do I connect that to how he treated me with music? Well, that dream came at a time when we were trying to work together on a project, but there were lots of problems that kept coming up. I was trying to get at the problems, but then something else would happen. After the dream, it became plain to me -- the problems were part of the plan. There wasn't ever going to be a musical project.

It wasn't something he was doing consciously, but we are responsible for that unconscious part of ourselves too, so I learned then that I'd be better off working on my own, and I have. Since that time I've learned how to play the guitar quite a bit better than I used to, and I fudge where I need it.

The song, "See You Again," was written about an ex-girlfriend that I was afraid I'd run into since we lived in the same town. But as I wrote, it turned into a song about some possibility existing that the relationship could be rekindled. That wasn't the case in truth, and I didn't want it to be, but the song wanted to be more hopeful about things than I was. It was one of the first times I ever let a song be what it wanted to be rather than jamming my truth onto it. I was uncomfortable with the lyrics but I lived with them. Listening now, I can hear the terrible reverby production I used back then. But I like how the vocals and backing vocals sit with each other.

Another song that was written at the same time was Stay Around. I have found that I often write songs in threes. There were these two and one other that I can't find a copy of right now. This version of "Stay Around" is the original with my brother's lead guitar playing on it. Listening to it now, I really like the fills he added in between leads. I never would have thought of those.

In those days, I had the idea that a song is best when it's had more than one person working on it. I still believe that. It's incredibly hard to get anyone interested in collaborating with you when you are as socially awkward and reserved as I am so I don't have a lot of evidence, but I think the little fills and the intricate plucking pattern in the bridge of this song show that it's true.

Now the best part of this tune is the bridge. It still hits me right when I hear it. That bass, one of my Rickenbackers, had a good tone for it. I should have just kept that one! It was a nice 4003 in white, though it was turning creme with age. The baseline I have there is just right.

I suppose this song is informed by the many years I spent as a bartender at this time. I surely served plenty of people who had that "stay around" bonhomie vibe going on. I never have really had it myself, on account of my aforementioned reservedness. Most people thought/think that I'm full of myself, and I probably am a little because what artist isn't? But mostly I'm just another one of those people for whom human contact is work.

40 songs

2011-11-01T10:59:00.000-04:00

Portrait of the artist as an old man; db in October 2011

I just spent the morning uploading songs and song fragments that I found on my hard-drives. All told, there are 40 of them! And there's more hidden on my drives somewhere.

The songs go back to the mid 1980s. It's really cool to hear my young voice, warbly as it was. I can't sing that well now because of ear troubles and asthma. Listening back, I get a clear sense of how age takes things from you one little bit at a time..

Over the next few days, I want to do a sketch on each tune, going as chronologically as I can. So with that in mind, first up is "So Long." I must've written and recorded this song in 1985 or so after meeting a girl I thought quite a bit of. It ended tragically, of course, but the first flush of new love and impossible longing is evident in the performance.

So Long

I think this was the first time I tried to record with an acoustic guitar. I had been trying off and on to learn to play the guitar over the years. I wasn't able to do it, and my brother generously pitched in with the acoustic performance you hear. The bass is a solid graphite Steinberger -- if you've heard them before you'll recognize that sound immediately.

I first started playing bass in 1980 or 81, I think. I know it was shortly after Rush's Moving Pictures came out, which I loved as soon as I heard. I resolved to learn how to play those intricate bass lines, and with a lot of hard work, I did. Eventually I graduated to Exit Stage Left, the classic Rush live album, which I would play from end to end.

I was in various small bands in Hattiesburg, Mississippi during those years, playing whatever people wanted to hear, and some things that they didn't. I would try to get the bands to play some Rush tunes, which were not especially popular at the time. We had a little trouble with the singing -- often I was called on to try it, and my voice wasn't really up to it. This song brings it all back to me -- all the small, smoky bars where we played Free Bird. I remember one band was called The Lonesome Bogey Band, after the keyboard player, who went by the nickname Bogey. Our big original hit at that time was "FOaD" which stands for just what you might think it does. It wasn't one of mine. Bands never played my songs. I wasn't pushy enough to get them into the lineup.

The next tune comes from later on -- probably 1991 or so. It's called "I will be there."

I will be there

I wrote it thinking of George Harrison, but I can't find anything about it that sounds especially like George now. I had a tough time with this tune, re-recording it at least three times, which is a lot for me. Generally, I record something once and move on, whatever it sounds like. But with this one, I wasn't satisfied and would try it again. The bass here is a Rickenbacker 4001v63 -- the one that you see in the picture on ReverbNation. Last I saw, it was still hanging in the local music store I sold it to. I tried to talk to the owner about buying it back a few years ago but I don't think he wants to part with it.

I was never satisfied with the v63 because it couldn't quite manage the famous tones from Chris Squire or Geddy Lee because it used the new wiring scheme rather than the old one that were in Squire and Lee's basses. Recently I owned a 4001c64S, and it had that tone. Even so, I sold the bass because Rickenbackers really only sound like Rickenbackers, and I didn't have the resources to own enough basses to cover all the sounds I wanted to make. I now use my trusty Made in Korea Tobias that I tricked out with new pickups and all, and also a 2007 Warwick Corvette Standard 5 string, which is so versatile you really would never need another bass.

Now that has gotten me to thinking about the various basses I've owned over the years. If you aren't a musician, you won't be familiar with a particular malady that infects all musicians to some degree or other. It's called Gear Acquisition Syndrome, or GAS for short. You'll be forever chasing a sound that you can hear in your head, but that your gear always fails to produce in just the way you want.

If you are just starting out -- beware! The sound in your head is a chimera! It will never be found! Turn back while you still have your cash!

My first bass was a Peavey t40, which I traded a beautiful Bach silver trombone for. I still feel pretty guilty about this because my grandpa had given me that trombone as a gift. I told him that I wanted to make the trade, and he was resistant, but agreed in the end. Sorry grandpa! It was a terrible trade on my part. No recording of that bass survives as far as I know, but I had a real tough time with it. Mississippi is a notoriously humid place, and most woods will warp there pretty badly. I don't know what that t40 was made out of, but it would warp so bad it was pitiful. The salesman at the music store gave me that piece of crap, and a piece of crap amp and fuzz box, for the trombone, and couldn't get me out the door fast enough. He knew he had made a killing. Over the years I slowly began to recognize how music store clerks' eyes would light up when they saw me coming.. Easy mark = me.

I'm not sure what came next directly, but it might have been a Rickenbacker. I've owned four of them. The Steinberger, of course, and there was a Fender Precision Elite, which showed me that some basses are just too big for my small hands. I had a Japanese made Fender Jazz which I could kick myself for letting go. I put some new pickups in it, I don't remember what now, but it turned in to a tone monster. I'm sure I got rid of it for another Rick..

For a while I had an Ibanez of some sort. These are more popular now than they were. Mine was made of such a light wood that it's tone was extremely lacking in muscle, but it was cheap and all I could afford at the time. I'm pretty sure I have a picture of myself holding it, a very young man at the time.

The author c1982

I don't know what that expression is supposed to mean. I know I was nervous because we were playing with a really good drummer at the time and were hoping to get him to stick with us. It was a no go.

Looking at that bass, I remember at that time I had an obsession with making sure my bass had 24 frets. I used to use all of them too, with the weird all-bass songs I would do. I wonder if I can turn one of those up?

LATE EDIT:

I found a couple more songs that are pretty old. This one comes from 1992, and I wrote it for the girl who became my girlfriend and then my wife.

How I love you (Oh Donna)

You can hear all the work I put into that. I remember being immensely proud when I was finished. It is a little over-produced and under-engineered, but I still like it today. I really enjoy the youthful fervor you can hear in it. Even if you didn't understand English you'd know it's a song that celebrates something.

I recall that Donna hated it. But she never has liked my music, except for the odd exception here and there.

Another that may actually be older than So Long up above is She's a Parallelogram. It must be from 1985 or thereabouts. I remember I had a bunch of songs like this one -- quirky and weird, but very 80s.

Forgotten Song

2011-10-29T12:51:00.002-04:00

Songs are much like dreams, though they are more directed by the conscious mind. But when they are at their best, there is something about them that transcends the personal.

I wrote this song at some point -- I'm sure there was a melody to it, but I can't remember it and it's not indicated in these notes. It's interesting even without the music.

MY dog left me all alone
My dog left me with nothing but this bone
My dog left me, how can I go on?
Now don't misunderstand me
I'm partial to this old chewing bone

My girl left me hanging on the phone
My girl hung up on me and now I'm all alone
Here with the phone going "beep beep"
So what am I gonna do?
Now don't misunderstand me
I was about to hang up on her too

[High E thing]

My boss told me "don't come back to work"
My boss fired me, what a frikkin' jerk
My boss fired me, so what am I gonna say?
Now don't misunderstand me
I hated that stupid job anyway

[Bridge, double time]

So I'm here all alone with a bone on the phone
but the girl hung up so I'm outta luck
And I got no job got nothing to do don't know how long
Can't worry too much
I'm feeling pretty good cause I got my freedom
If the dog ain't around won't have to feed him
I still got the bone and I got my pride
So hows 'bout that for looking on the bright side?

[High E thing]

My teevee broke on Sunday afternoon
Just before the big game, I guess I blew a fuse
I broke my tv, so what am I gonna do?
Now don't misunderstand me
This is sheer unadulterated hard core serious tragedy

It's a blues song, but I seem to have seen things in a wry way that day.

I've decided to re-up on the musical portion of my life. It's a hobby to me, but how will my children and grandchildren see it? Should I toss it into the trash and forget it because I can't make a living from it?

I think no. As I listen to the songs now, with a good bit of distance between the last time I heard them and now, I can easily see how they all exhibit something that is from within me. There may be influences from "beyond," but if that's the case, they've always been there and no human thing has ever been done without them. They inhabit the same space as creativity itself, and when we dip our mental quill into that ink, we can't refuse the influence. But it's still me doing the writing, and choosing how to present what's written.

So there it is.

Form is a farm

2011-10-20T13:40:00.001-04:00

I haven't been able to turn this dream up again in my journal. I saw it again a few days ago and thought about posting it then, but put it off. Wouldn't you know it? Now I can't find it..

It was a very short experience, which I'm not even sure I should call a dream. I was waking, and I clearly heard a voice in my ear, but in the way that you hear things when you are having a hypnagogic hallucination. I knew I wasn't totally awake, but in that other "space" and as I became aware of it, I perked up in anticipation that something would happen because something always happens there.

This time, a strange voice said, simply, "Form is a farm." The word "form" had the sense of all form, all material existence.

I can't find the quote right now, but it seems to me that Fort once said something pretty similar when he was on one of his "I think we are property" rants.

But it also reminds me of a seemingly very different dream. In that one, it was my task to ferry some cargo containers that looked like old time Steamer Trunks.

I had quite a few loaded up on my ship, but I looked back at the dock and I could see that there were many, many more.

In the dream I was complaining that I didn't get to do the things that I wanted to do. And the sense of the dream was, "If you'll just get those trunks safely to port, then you can go do what you want to do." But what I wanted to do was depicted as a frozen city. When I saw it in the dream, I didn't want to go there anymore. I looked wistfully at the giant pile of trunks on the dock and wondered if I should pull another voyage? Or maybe a lot more voyages? The trunks were people, and I knew it. I had my own kids on my ship, and maybe some more people. I accepted then that this was my responsibility. I had to get them to port. Then I wondered why my responsibility should end there?

Form as farm, bodily form as container..

I usually resist attempting a strictly Christian reading on the things I discuss here, but here I can't help but see an echo of what Jesus said about the what God was up to here in our world. For instance, the Parable of the Sower seems to have something like this in mind -- though there is no mention of the farmer's role in making sure the seeds grow:

"A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown"

Then there is the Parable of Wheat and Tares:

"The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared. The owner's servants came to him and said, `Sir, didn't you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?'

" `An enemy did this,' he replied. The servants asked him, `Do you want us to go and pull them up?' `No,' he answered, `because while you are pulling the weeds, you may root up the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.' "

These parables, both from Matthew 13, use farmed plants to stand in for people, and resonate with the words "form is a farm". Mark also uses similar language:

"This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain—first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head. As soon as the grain is ripe, he puts the sickle to it, because the harvest has come" (Mark 4:26-29).

The sense of the farmer not taking a direct role in the growing of the seeds seems to mean something here -- not exactly what you'd expect Jesus to say about a personified and all perfect, all knowing God.

OK, souls = growing plants that need to be tended is well represented in biblical literature. But what about trunks that contain spirits?

The idea that the human body might be a container for spirits, and not just your spirit, goes way back. In Christianity there is the idea of possession by evil spirits, but also the idea that our bodies are used as a dwelling place for God Himself.

The Christian Mystic Teresa of Avilla had this to say:

The soul of the just man is but a paradise, in which, God tells us, He takes His delight. What do you imagine, must that dwelling be in which a King so mighty, so wise, and so pure, containing in Himself all good, can delight to rest? Nothing can be compared to the great beauty and capabilities of a soul; however keen our intellects may be, they are as unable to comprehend them as to comprehend God..

But it isn't only in religion that one finds a resonance with the idea that humans are spirits inside containers -- you also find this idea in some very strange literature.. new age thought, especially that which is from a channeled source, uses the idea of human bodies as containers, and this has been taken over by certain factions of the UFO movement. John Lear has said, "The purpose of the grays is to take care of the containers...us. We are containers of souls."

The mixing of religion and UFO cultism might seem an absurdity -- even sacrilegious to some -- but look at the ethos that Lear espouses:

. . . relax and enjoy life while you are here and try and live you[r] life with integrity; and without envy, hate or greed. If you are having difficulty in life and things just aren't going your way these are merely challenges to see how you handle yourself. Every day a new challenge presents [it]self and these challenges should be met with integrity; and without envy, hate or greed. NO challenge is by accident. It is carefully planned. Each person's soul matures at a different rate.

If you are broke, short of cash, going through a divorce, lost your job, and/or have a physical infirmity these are just challenges. Sometime in a previous life you did something that make these challenges necessary to teach you something.

When you die you will be shown all the good and bad things you did in your life and believe me they don't miss a thing. Your deepest darkest secret will be in plain view for you to see. There will be no judgment or no sentence other than being sent back to earth for another try at it. Sometimes you get a chance to choose the family you will grow up in. Sometimes not.

So remember, the only thing that matters in life is your ability to live it with integrity and without envy, hate or greed.

New agey, sure, but also as simple and timeless as the golden rule.

The world as a school, form as a farm, and the body as container. It's all rather jumbled in different mythic contexts but there's a thread here..

LATE EDIT: I found the dream. It's pretty unremarkable as an entry in the journal:

April 6, 2001

As I woke I clearly heard a voice tell me “form is a farm.”

This is from just a few days after the birth of my twins.

The new dust bowl?

2011-10-18T11:30:00.001-04:00

The echo of the past

2011-10-14T00:00:00.000-04:00

I have no direct memory of any past life. But I still have reason to believe that I lived at least once before. Or let me take that back and put it another way -- I have reason to believe I have had at least one chance to accrue plenty of karma, whether through living a material life or by other means.

To reconstruct the case, I have had to go through several dreams and experiences. The first was a kind of visionary experience when I was very young. I don't know how old I was for certain, but I do know that it happened in the Victorian era house my mother's parents owned when I was very small. It is odd how I can see parts of that house so clearly -- I remember the crystal doorknobs on the solid wooden doors. I remember the wooden floors. I remember the antique furniture -- not bought antiques, mind you, but true pieces hand-me-down antiquity. I also remember the constant smell of vinegar, because that was the disinfectant of choice in those days.

But the main memory is of looking up at the ceiling and seeing a round hole in it, over which peered several angels, who I believed had come to punish me. Further, for some reason, I felt that I wanted them to.

This is an odd vision for a two or three year old!

Now go forward thirty some odd years, and I have a dream that might tell something about this situation.

January 16, 2004

I was under house arrest for ten days. I’m not sure what I did to get myself arrested, or under whose authority.. But it was strange. I was in the bedroom of a huge house. The first floor looked like a very busy mall. Along a catwalk like hallway I could go toward my parents room. At the other end was the room I was confined to, which also had a long bathroom off to the right. I knew that I was going to have to go through an act that pretended to cut off my head on the 6th day. I would wear a whole head mask that had a metal ring around the neck to protect me against the axe stroke. Like a magicians illusion, my body would appear to drop away, leaving only my head. I was afriad, though, because I couldn’t figure out how the mask had anything to do with protecting me. Under that scenario, how does my body drop away without actually being separated from my head? As I was worrying about this, a young and beautiful lady came in from the other side of my bathroom. She looked a bit like a girl I had known named Mara. In the dream, I know this girl well and I’m surprised but happy to see her. I’m pretty sure she’s not supposed to be there. But back up -- before this I had gotten some ridicule from some hostile people from down below. I said to them, “God loves you AND me, so why should we be ugly to each other?” I said this with some emotion, and it seemed to at least puzzle my abusers. Anyway, after that, in comes Mara. We talk for a minute about a book, but then she jumps on me, unbuttoning my shirt – obviously sexual. She also undoes my pants, but as she traces her hand down my chest she gets to my stomach and stops. I say, “I haven’t quite gotten rid of it yet.” She looks displeased and stops her advances, but in a good humored way. I think, “Well, when I slim down, she’ll have sex with me.” She gets up to go but asks me my phone number. (Amazingly, to my waking self, I remember my cellphone number exactly.) I tell her, then I ask her for hers, but she demurs.. I say, “I know you can give it to me, your phone is right there,” but she just continues on her way, casting back something like, “then don’t press.” I call back, “Oh, I get it!” realizing I’d been rude. A scene after this has to do with checking on my parent’s room to see if they are sleeping. I only see them in silhoutte.. They are just waking up and I run back to my prison room.

Eeesh! Not looking forward to that 6th day..

A little earlier I had this dream:

I was in the shower. Right next to my shower stall (which was really a bathtub with a curtain such as we had where I was living at the time) there was another shower enclosure with that dimpled glass/plastic exterior and a door. It had an odd shape, which may be important, so I have drawn it in my journal (see figure there). As I got into the shower, I saw that there was a young man in the stall glaring at me with eyes unblinking, intent upon me, full of hate. I drew my curtain to shut out the sight of him, but then I worried that he could easily open his door and stab through the curtain with a knife. I opened my curtain again, and there he was with naked loathing of such intensity it shuddered me. Then I thought to make some humorous movements, to see if he could be loosened up, or shaken from his baleful gaze for even a moment. He followed my movement with his eyes, but his expression never changed. There was no human warmth in him.

Sometimes these figures that hate you are really just part of you -- and that could be in this case because he looked enough like a young me, but I didn't consider that in the dream.

Here are more references to punishment:

June 2, 2009
Dreamed once again about having your body chopped off -- to me this is a metaphor for death. Since you continue on after death in spirit/mind, it’s like having your body chopped off. There is always a sense that this is a penalty for some transgression. Then I dreamed of having to choose between two swats with a paddle or a long time incarcerated. I was leaning toward taking the paddle swats and getting them over with but I was afraid they would hurt too much.

I have plenty of dreams that might relate to this -- one I can't find now had a sort of criminal catch hold of me, raise up a pistol and say, "come on man, just two in the head and it'll be all over!"

In other dreams, I become aware that the police can be criminals too; in fact in one, some legit police say they aren't looking for me because I haven't done anything wrong, but another one comes along and holds me at gun point, considering whether he'll shoot me or not. In this dream, he's a rogue cop, or a cop on the take.

So what did I do in a previous incarnation? Was it really something bad, or just something that certain criminal types seem to know they can shoot me for and get away with it?

Dream -- Godzillas marching

2011-10-13T09:34:00.000-04:00

April 20, 2002
GODZILLAS MARCHINGDreamed of a man who had somehow “heightened his vibration”, and this gave him magical powers. When you looked at him, he “jumped frames” like a movie with some individual frames missing. I understood this in terms of quantum time – maybe I have the term wrong – but the deal was he was not fully in my frame, being also in others of the “many worlds” or some such. Anyway, I was supposed to fight him, and I knew I would lose because of his powers, but I got into a fighting stance anyway. He didn’t want to fight yet, he wanted me to get powers like his (though he didn’t say it outright) and led me around the city. It was night in an open city like the French Quarter of New Orleans. He showed me the different things he could do. Then I noticed, as we were leaving a restaurant (we and some others took tables to use as umbrellas!) That he made a little hop at a certain spot along the walkway outside. I could tell it was significant, so I went back and hopped there too, and hopped into the space he was in – both in our world and another, higher plane, and got the powers he had. He showed me that by concentrating on the stars, I could get the astrological reading to stand out, and this would show me what to do. I only had to concentrate hard and the stars magnified and pictures emerged. I saw a line of godzillas were headed our way. The man who showed me all of this looked like an actor from a sitcom I rarely ever watched – “Spin City” and he played an aide of the governor. His character was a buffoon, or fool. One of the powers I received was the ability to repulse attacks like in the movie “The Matrix”. Some thugs tried to shoot us (someone else was with me) and I made the bullets deflect away.

The new distributed creativity..

2011-10-12T15:03:00.000-04:00

A video game that spawns a web-movie?

Or a video game that spawns some new form of graphic-novel-like literature?What the new entertainment industry is all about -- smashing boundaries and creating productive synergies.

An early dream

2011-10-11T10:24:00.001-04:00

Mid 1970s

My best friend and I had some kind of special job. There had been a disaster, and the social fabric of the country had disintegrated. There wasn’t a government anymore and it was sort of like what you would think of from Post Apocalyptic movies like Mad Max, though these were still years in the future when I had the dream. We had on some kind of special armor (now you’d recognize it as something from a science fiction show or video game -- a mechanized suit of some sort) and we got the people into lines. Even now, many years later, I can remember the looks of worry and helplessness on the faces of the people. I hated seeing them like that. I tried to cheer them up when I could. We were going to take them to a new place where they would be safer. I believe we were leaving Florida. We had to walk because transportation didn’t work anymore. Our job was to lead them and keep them safe until they arrived where they were going.

Date uncertain but most likely 1974-5.

I don't know what it means, but I have read others to have had similar dreams or visions. I wish I could find some of them now to compare.

Would advanced intelligence even be material?

2011-10-11T08:55:00.004-04:00

Don't forget Star Trek got here first..

But what if advanced super-intelligent life is no longer matter based? What if they exist at a higher level concept than matter. Are matter and information all there is? asks Paul Davies, physicist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University. Five hundred years ago,he says, the very concept of a computer, a device manipulating information, or software, would have been incomprehensible. Might there still be a higher level he asks as yet outside all human experience that organizes information in the same way that information-processing organizes electrons."

Davies envisions an alien technology that: Is not made of matter; has no fixed size or shape; has no well-defined boundaries or topology; is dynamical on all scales of space and time; or, conversely, does not appear to do anything at all that we can discern; does not consist of discrete, separate things; rather, it is a system, a subtle higher-level of things.

This alien technology is "nature plus." Technology is in the broadest sense according to Davies, mind or intelligence or purpose blending with nature. It's technology that harnesses the laws of physics; it does not override them. To say that a radio or a laser or a monolith on the Moon is "unnatural," doesn't mean it isn't part of nature; it's nature plus.

Just as quantum weirdness is detected only with special apparatus, so alien technology might go undetected and unsuspected --it may exist in a realm beyond current human capabilities and evolution. A third, or fourth, or fifth realm millions of years evolved beyond the age of homo sapiens.

Even physicists are saying it.

Via Daily Galaxy.

Dream -- Sometimes they stand there right in front of you

2011-10-08T15:59:00.003-04:00

Holy crap! Not exactly like this..

I recently had a dream that I know has to do with some of the things that I talk about on this blog. In it, I was in a submarine with other "researchers" -- it was the type of sub that goes down very deep into the ocean. I was in the back saying, "you'll never get close enough to any of these fish down here to really see them." No sooner had I said that then the sub literally ran right into a huge fish, just sitting there uncaring that we had spotted it.

There were plenty of fish on the periphery of our view also, we could see that they were there, but could not get any details of them. But a couple of them came right out to be gawked at.

In the dream, I was deeply surprised. "Wow, some of them will let you see them!" I thought.

EDIT: in case it isn't clearly implied, I take the deep sea fish to represent those things that are hidden from us within the chaos at the edge of human perception, but which nonetheless exist.

Since then, there have been many pictures and videos of strange things people have seen lately. Some of them are hoaxes, but I think some of them might be legit.

Announcing War of Staves and call for illustrator

2011-10-06T12:37:00.004-04:00

We all get a little bored at lunchtime, don't we? I know what the work-day is like, though I don't have a job at present. Well, let me help you with that and you help me too, deal?

Here's how. I'm currently writing a Fantasy/Sci Fi novel that deals with a lot of the things I write about on this blog. But I have problems getting motivated. So what I thought I'd do is put it up online and let you, my loyal readers, read it at your leisure. And you, for your end of the bargain, can just tell me from time to time to get off my behind and write it. Hows that?

Here's the Blog, with the first three chapter uploaded for you to read and mull over (and the unfinished fourth available in draft form as well).

I wonder, also, if any of you are competent illustrators? If any of you are, and you would enjoy making some artwork for the blog, please contact me through my email addy up there. I will gladly put up whatever you create for it, and make sure everyone knows who you are and how to find more of your stuff.

A recent dream -- wake up!

2011-10-05T11:56:00.000-04:00

I think I might have mentioned this dream before. It came about a year ago, perhaps a bit longer -- 18 months.

In it, my grandfather is sitting between two guys who look like mafia goons. They are making rather smug faces and avoiding eye contact, but bouncing their heads slightly from time to time, as if nodding "yes." They were each kind of like a caricature of a Robert Di Nero mob character.

In between them my grandfather is giving me a meaningful look. He's drinking scotch and asks me if I'd like some. I say yes. He pours me a glass, but when he goes to hand it to me, he splashes it in my face. He says, "Oh sorry, let me get you another one." I laugh in the dream. I tell him how happy I am to see him and enjoy being able to be with him, but wonder what the other two guys are there for.

After I wake up, I realize he's telling me to wake up to something. He can't be specific because of the goons sitting beside him. At the time, I thought it had something to do with the band I was in.

A rather odd dream, no? I felt that my grandfather really had something to do with it, and had done this at some risk to himself. Needless to say, I was grateful for his effort. I have wondered many times since whether I got the gist of it right?

Writing about traumatic events can help to heal

2011-10-04T09:38:00.000-04:00

Keeping secrets can make you sick

As I mentioned last time, I am reading a book called The Secret Life of Pronouns. In it, I learned that people who write about their traumatic experiences in a certain way -- not obsessively reliving it, but telling the events in a narrative -- are much healthier than those who do not speak or write about their experiences. And I'm not talking about mentally healthier, I mean physically healthier.

That's a bit surprising, isn't it? Maybe not completely, because why else would Psychology exist as a therapeutic practice? Still, just writing about what happened to you can change things for the better.

Conversely, holding things in makes people unhealthy.

In another book I've recently read, Fringeology, I learned about a technique to treat Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which involves the patient retelling what happened, and then simple eye movements, called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). The fact that PTSD had been untreatable for most people until this was discovered makes this extremely strange fact all the more interesting.

Open up! Holding it in makes us unhealthy.

You can learn a lot from little words

2011-10-01T10:18:00.000-04:00

I'm reading a book called The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us. You might think that you aren't interested in a book with a title like that, but you should be. Because it turns out, our words say quite a bit about us. Especially the small ones.

Here's what that paragraph up above revealed about me:

LIWC Results

Details of Writer: 47 year old Male
Date/Time: 30 September 2011, 11:32 pm

LIWC Dimension	Your Data	Personal Texts	Formal Texts
Self-references (I, me, my)	9.80	11.4	4.2
Social words	21.57	9.5	8.0
Positive emotions	1.96	2.7	2.6
Negative emotions	0.00	2.6	1.6
Overall cognitive words	15.69	7.8	5.4
Articles (a, an, the)	11.76	5.0	7.2
Big words (> 6 letters)	9.80	13.1	19.6

If you'd like to try it on your own writing go here.

Of course, you and I can't figure out what it means, but James Pennebaker can. He has another site set up to analyze people's tweets for personality traits. I don't tweet, so I can't be the test subject for this one. But let's choose someone fun. How about James Randi? (Really, it's the JREF and probably not Randi himself.)

Analysis of tweets from jref
(1815 most recent words - 30th September, 2011)

Emotional Style

Upbeat (High)

Worried (Low)

Angry (Very high)

Depressed (Low)

Social Style

Plugged In (High)

Personable (Low)

Arrogant/Distant (High)

Spacy/Valley girl (Low)

Thinking Style

Analytic (Low)

Sensory (Low)

In-the-moment (Low)

Hmm.. seems about right. Let's go in another direction:

Analysis of tweets from katyperry
(228 most recent words - 30th September, 2011)

Emotional Style

Upbeat (Very high)

Worried (Average)

Angry (Average)

Depressed (Very high)

Social Style

Plugged In (Average)

Personable (Average)

Arrogant/Distant (Average)

Spacy/Valley girl (High)

Thinking Style

Analytic (Average)

Sensory (Average)

In-the-moment (Average)

Sorry to see Miss Perry is feeling blue. Hope things are looking up for her soon.

The really interesting bit is that this information comes from the small words -- the articles, prepositions, conjunctions -- that sort of stuff. Would you have believed it if some scientist hadn't gone out and proved it?

No. No you would not.

But it's true.

Pronouns (such as I, you, they), articles (a, an, the), prepositions (to, of, for), auxiliary verbs (is, am, have), and a handful of other common word categories are called function words. On their own, function words have very little meaning. In English, there are fewer than 500 function words yet they account for more than half of the words we speak, hear, and read every day. By analyzing their use, we begin to learn how speakers are connecting with their audiences, their friends, their conversational topics, and themselves.

It's not just what you say, it's how you say it.

I'm only into chapter 3, but this book is right up my alley..

Tally of modern misery

2011-09-30T15:55:00.002-04:00

Not by accident, a meme

Recent disasters worldwide

2003 -- European heat wave
2003 -- Bam earthquake
2004 -- Indian Ocean tsunami
2005 -- Hurricane Katrina
2005 -- Kashmir earthquake
2008 -- Myanmar cyclone Nargis
2008 -- Sichuan earthquake
2009 -- Australian Black Saturday bushfires
2010 -- Iceland volcano eruption
2010 -- Deepwater Horizon oil spill
2010 -- Russian heat wave
2010 -- Haiti earthquake
2011 -- Japanese earthquake and tsunami
2011 -- Fukushima Diachi nuclear disaster
2011 -- US tornados of April and May
2011 -- Great Mississippi River Floods
2011 -- Hurricane Irene
2011 -- Horn of Africa drought and famine
2011 -- Bastrop County (Texas) Complex fires

Of course this list is pretty US-centric and doesn't cover everything from the time period in question. And some of the incidents were more ominous than disastrous, like the Icelandic volcano. But the year isn't even over yet, and there'll no doubt be more to add to the list before we are done.

I didn't add Snowmageddon, which amazed and annoyed us here on the east coast in 2010, because it wasn't a disaster. But it might have been a portent all the same..

Changing times c150 years ago to today

2011-09-29T15:08:00.001-04:00

A view of Fredericksburg from Stafford Heights during the Civil War

I was born in Fredericksburg, Virginia. That is a town situated about halfway between Washington, DC and Richmond. It had some battles of small significance during the Civil War, at around the time the above image was taken.

Here's an old postcard of the area from c1910 or so. The inscription reads "Fredericksburg from Stafford Heights." So it's nearly the same shot, but about 50 years later.

Here's another picture shot from about the same place. The postcard was mailed in 1924, so the picture must hail from before then. Not much has changed. (In fact, maybe nothing -- it looks like it could be the same picture in color.)

There are some differences between these and the one from the 1860s, but not that many. You will no doubt notice that the tallest structures are the church towers. This was true in most cities from the medieval age to the mid 20th Century.

Here's a map of the area that seems to have been produced for a game.

Union and Confederate Forces can be seen arrayed on the map

That's the Rappahanock River that runs beside it. I spent many a night along the Rappahanock a bit further west, looking for large hairy folk.

This photograph of the approximate area is undated, but judging by the picture quality looks to be much more modern.

And this one hails from 2010, but doesn't show quite as much since the leaves are in full bloom.

Still, you can't see anything that has changed in 150 years from these pictures.

Of course an awful lot has. These pictures are taken from an historic mansion from across the river, toward downtown Fredericksburg, which is also considered an historic landmark area. But outside this little slice of land, there is plenty of change.

This aerial photo was taken c2000. Compare this to the Civil War era photo.

There's no date on this one, but it's probably from the last year or so. This is what a lot of Fredericksburg and environs look like now.

Biorobotics and the cryptoterrestrials

2011-09-27T11:11:00.001-04:00

Here's DARPA's hummingbird spy drone.

"You can use these things anywhere, put them anyplace, and the target will never even know they're being watched," said defense expert Peter W. Singer.

Or how about a dragonfly? (This one is too big, but you can bet they could be built smaller.)

Bird-like spy drone that crashed in Pakistan

We are only in the infancy of this particular art. Soon enough, there'll be spy drones that look so much like the real thing you'd have to catch it to be sure. And then when biorobotics catches up, even catching one won't tell the tale.

So, considering what we considered in the last post -- since if there are any at all, there's every likelihood that some alien races have had a billions-of-years head start on us, if all those races wanted to do was spy on us, there's little chance we'd know about most of them. Only those races that were not very far ahead of us would be so clumsy as to be caught out.

But I don't think watching us is their real interest. (I think there must be some of that going on, in a sort of anthropological sense, to come to understand us as we understand ourselves. But for that they'd need biorobotic humans.)

Recall that I mentioned how we sent robots to Mars rather than people, because it's cheaper and safer. Also recall that I opined that, had we been able to, we'd almost certainly have sent a "hairy fellow who could look out for himself." This is not far fetched -- well, the hairy fellow part is at the moment, but how many more years will that be the case?

Bigfoot at work?

It's not always a machine that we use for our purposes even now. The Navy routinely uses dolphins and other marine animals to do work that it is too dangerous or impractical for humans to do. And there are some things dolphins can do that humans just can't.

“Dolphins are one of the few creatures that have natural sonar abilities,” Davis explains.
“They can detect objects buried three to four inches deep in sediment, such as a mine, and relay that information back to humans. So what they do can be literally a lifesaving act,” Davis adds.

Imagine centuries from now, when biorobotics has evolved into something else -- perhaps the possibility of designing a creature to do a specific job.

We will certainly do that one day, perhaps soon. And if we will, would not races that have lived for billions of years more than we already have done this, routinely?

I'm reminded of Henry Franzoni's account of one of the myths of the Kwakiutl tribe. In a nutshell, the tribe believes that bigfoot is "the doorwarden" for a being who lives under the sea -- a being with "a thousand eyes and a thousand mouths." (You can find the extended quote here, but you have to scroll down to near the bottom.)

A being with a thousand eyes and a thousand mouths could be a poetic way of talking about a race that had evolved a telepathic "hive mind." Sort of like how people describe the typical "gray" alien.

So, why do people see those hairy fellows in the woods -- or indeed, in the suburbs (and often near military bases in any case), yet no convincing evidence of said hairy fellows has ever been produced?

My best guess is that bigfoot is a bioengineering project, designed perfectly for its environment. And if that's so, I doubt it's the only one.

UPDATE: Don't miss my dream from last year "Bigfoot not what you think it is."

Billions of years

2011-09-25T14:49:00.000-04:00

I think one fact that can really unlock everything that puzzles us about what we call the paranormal is the age of the universe..

Let us not forget these basic facts. Our planet is about 4.6 billion years old. The universe is presently judged to be 13.7 billion years old. And that's just this universe, which may be merely one of many.

Even if you restrict things to this universe, according to astro-biologists, life could first have arisen around 12 billion years ago. Give a little time for life to become intelligent -- and maybe that is a longer process than we can imagine now, so for arguments sake, let's take 6 billion years just for that. That would still mean intelligent life in the universe would have about 6 billion years on us.

6 billion years..

That's a lot of time, far more than we can imagine, being that our advanced technology is less than 100 years old, our culture can't be more than 10,000 years old, and our form only evolved 200,000 years ago.

Left to right, Neandertal, Homo Sapiens

In 6 billion years, the first, second, third, the billionth intelligent races to evolve could well be several billion years older than we are.

Just let that sink in for a bit.

Whatever technology they developed would be pure magic to us.

All the odd things that happen, that we cannot fathom could possibly exist with our own level of technological or scientific advancement, could easily be explained by a technology billions of years older than our own.

The very fact that this is so must make us pause to consider things that we have heretofore washed our hands of far too quickly. Within the limits of our knowledge, we do not believe it is mere speculation that the universe could support life so many billions of years ago. So long as this is so, we must take into account that there could very well be people out there billions of years more advanced than we are, and their form, their concerns, even their limitations may be nothing at all like our own.

Penny for your thoughts?

2011-09-23T19:02:00.002-04:00

Scientists can see inside your mind, man..

I suppose soon we'll all be able to record our dreams.

Faster than light particles found

2011-09-22T21:52:00.001-04:00

Seems somewhat important.

GENEVA, Sept 22 (Reuters) - An international team of scientists said on Thursday they had recorded sub-atomic particles travelling faster than light -- a finding that could overturn one of Einstein's long-accepted fundamental laws of the universe.

Antonio Ereditato, spokesman for the researchers, told Reuters that measurements taken over three years showed neutrinos pumped from CERN near Geneva to Gran Sasso in Italy had arrived 60 nanoseconds quicker than light would have done.

"We have high confidence in our results. We have checked and rechecked for anything that could have distorted our measurements but we found nothing," he said. "We now want colleagues to check them independently."

If confirmed, the discovery would undermine Albert Einstein's 1905 theory of special relativity, which says that the speed of light is a "cosmic constant" and that nothing in the universe can travel faster.

UPDATE -- it just gets better.

Sher also mentions a third option: that the measurement is correct. Some theories posit that there are extra, hidden dimensions beyond the familiar four (three of space, one of time). It's possible that the speedy neutrinos tunnel through these extra dimensions, reducing the distance they have to travel to get to the target. This would explain the measurement without requiring the speed of light to be broken.

A lesson in critical thinking

2011-09-14T15:52:00.000-04:00

I have found this image with the following text in so many places on the internet, it isn't possible to discern where it first originated without doing some sleuthing, and I'm not going to that effort. Here's the text:

This photo was taken in northern Washington state and was reportedly found with another partial imprint. It appears to be the shoeprint of a large individual (see man's shoe in lower right of photo for comparison) approximately 16 inches long from heel to toe.

The rock itself is judged by geologists in "evolutionary time" (as opposed to actual time) to be between 10 and 20 million years old. The point is, according to evolutionary theory, no one should have been around early enough to leave a shoe imprint in what is now solid rock. No one should have been around to draw one either.

There remains the possibilty of course that someone painstakingly chiseled out two convincing shoeprints in recent times and left them on a mountain.

Alright, class -- you might have noticed that the writer provides us with two possibilities. First, that this image is of a shoe print that fossilized over millions of years. Or that it is a work of art meant to depict a shoe print.

Are these the only possibilities?

What criticisms could you make of the statements made by the author?

Well let me tell you.

First, the author is clearly biased against evolutionary theory and something called "evolutionary time." This bias could well be reasonable, but present facts do not support that view. So when you evaluate those paragraphs, keep in mind that the author has chosen to think a certain way, that most people do not think this way, and this has influenced his interpretation of facts.

Now, let's stay with the author for a minute. Let's grant that he's right that evolutionary time is illusory because God made the earth a certain number of days ago -- an old Irish Monk once worked it out but I forget the number.

Since you've granted that God exists, couldn't God pretty well do whatever He chose to do? If He wants to pop someone back in time to leave a footprint, who is going to gainsay it? I'm being a bit silly, but really I have a point -- why hasn't the author given this point of view any credence? Could it be because he really has taken on the scientific point of view that time is inviolable?

Because even though science isn't certain about this, that is where the view comes from. Isn't that ironic..

OK, that's one thing. Now here's another. Science isn't certain that time is inviolable. If it turns out that it isn't, that could well be your shoe print we are looking at; your future being in your past too it seems. Ho ho.

And of course it could well be that it only looks like a shoe. Though that would be pretty remarkable. Kind of like this video:

Paradolia my ass!

Wiki sez:

Pareidolia ( /pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-doh-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds

I might split my sides from laughing. Either that's CGI, or your world is every bit as weird as I keep telling you it is.

Moons of Saturn from Casini

2011-09-14T08:59:00.003-04:00

Click image for larger size

Something beautiful about pictures from space.

Floodageddon..

2011-09-08T19:51:00.001-04:00

My wife almost didn't make it home tonight due to the flash flooding in our area. It has been pretty constantly raining all day, and there's nowhere for a lot of this water to go.

7:25 p.m. update: Torrential rain continues, particularly in southern Fairfax county, southeast Prince William county, and southern Charles county. Road closures have been reported in Falls Church city, and a section of the beltway has been shutdown in both directions over Cameron Run due to high water. Flash flood warnings have been extended for the western suburbs through 11:00 p.m. Areas currently experiencing heavy rain may not see signficant improvement until after midnight. Rain is not moving quickly. This may have some incredibly bad consequences.

Flooding in PA is at historic levels.

Vermont is still trying to clean up the mess from Irene, but new rains hampers their efforts.

Meanwhile, the droughts and fires in the west continue.

The destruction caused by wildfires in Texas is mounting, with the number of homes reported lost soaring to 1,626, authorities said.

A fire raging across the state's Bastrop County has consumed 1,386 homes -- nearly double the 785 homes listed as lost as recently as Wednesday. Blazes elsewhere in the state are said to have destroyed about 240 homes since Sunday.

The escalating property toll underscores the sheer magnitude of the fires -- and the state's limited resources.

And new storms brew in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico.

There's a moment coming. An epoch defining moment where we realize something very fundamental has changed.

Roswell debris goes missing in the mail and Socially Constructed Ignorance

2011-09-07T09:06:00.002-04:00

Remember a few posts back when I mentioned that a geologist had found some interesting debris in the Roswell dirt? Tests suggested that it was not from this earth, but nobody will believe that until it is independently confirmed, right? So the geologist sent some debris to a nearby university to start that process.

Only the debris never arrived.

The packaging did, but it was empty. The debris -- gone.

You can read about it at Kevin Randles blog.

I have a couple of points to make that aren't about the missing debris. Of course it went missing -- the geologist put it in the mail.

My focus is on the mindset evident in KRs post, and in the geologist's attitude prior to losing his samples.

The attitude is, "I don't believe in all that hooey." Notice how Randles starts his post with just this attitude:

I have never been a big fan of the paranoia that runs through the UFO field. I don’t believe Men in Black are stalking UFO witnesses or investigators. I don’t believe that black helicopters routinely inspect witnesses and investigators. I just don’t buy into all the paranoia that runs so deep.

You have to beware of that attitude because it is constructed and maintained by the media. It is not an attitude born from experience -- in fact, it's an attitude that denies experience. And it also is an attitude that serves the interests of those who would wish to hide something from you.

It isn't paranoid to consider the experience of others when making decisions about how to safeguard what ought to have been considered crucial and precious evidence -- it is prudent.

I mean, once you had found something in the Roswell desert that looked even remotely like it might support the stories of a crashed UFO, the logical next step in thought should have been -- if this is what it might be, then the government has gone to great lengths to hide that fact for a long time.

From there, one need not be paranoid to take precautions.

The mindset evident in Randles' post does the work of any clandestine organization seeking to hide information about Roswell for them. Which is why that mindset exists in the first place.

The fact is, we don't know much about anything. We don't know what UFOs are -- whether they are aliens, psychological aberrations, natural energy forms, tricks of perception -- we have no idea. And we also have no idea what the stories about Men in Black represent. To pretend that we do know does not make us smart or cool or with the "in crowd" (which is what such a construction would be calculated to trigger in us) it actually makes us willing shills.

Randles says, "I don’t know how any governmental agency, if a governmental agency was involved, could have pulled this off. It is one of those mysteries that dot the landscape."

It doesn't take very much imagination to figure out how such a thing could have been done. It also doesn't take a paranoiac to think some three lettered government agency or another might have done it, indeed, surely would have done it if they thought they needed to protect something (they usually cite "National Security" but who really knows what they are protecting?).

There's ignorance -- we all share that. There's the willful ignorance of the hardcore believer or skeptic -- we should all shun that. And then there is the socially constructed ignorance such as Randles exhibits in his post. We must all beware that.

Heal the body with the mind

2011-09-01T12:25:00.000-04:00

Gravity not an emergent force

2011-08-29T12:02:00.000-04:00

I can't remember if I've ever highlighted this idea that gravity might be an emergent force and not a basic force of nature. But, according to Archil Kobakhidze of The University of Melbourne in Australia, it turns out that it simply cannot be:

Kobakhidze argues that since each quantum particle must be described by a large number of other particles, this leads to a particular equation that describes the effect of gravity.

But here's the thing: the conventional view of gravity leads to a different equation.

In other words, the emergent and traditional views of gravity make different predictions about the gravitational force a quantum particle ought to experience. And that opens the way for an experimental test.

As it happens, physicists have been measuring the force of gravity on neutrons for ten yeas or so. And...wait for the drum roll... the results exactly match the predictions of traditional gravitational theory, says Kobakhidze.

"Experiments on gravitational bound states of neutrons unambiguously disprove the entropic [ie, emergent] origin of gravitation," he says.

Somehow the power is still on..

2011-08-28T00:07:00.000-04:00

Look at all that rain in the east

We have fared pretty well here, though not far to the east lots of folks are suffering with no power and high winds. Here, nothing but a steady rain since morning.

The picture I put up interests me -- I've never looked at these combined doppler radar images before, so I don't know whether this is a normal pattern, but it interested me because of a dream I once had that had a map much like that one in it. In that dream, the country was cut in half just about like this picture, and there was a sense that it wasn't good to be west of that middle line dividing the rainy areas and the more dry areas. It just struck me given the dream I had last night that included reference to water riots..

Dream -- telling the future

2011-08-27T11:09:00.000-04:00

Not such a bad future.

A rather odd dream for me. In it, I was going back in time to tell people what would happen in the future. I told them of the many things that we all experienced, like 9/11, Katrina, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami. Then I started talking about things that haven't happened. I told them that people started going crazy because of all the disasters and there was rioting and fighting in the cities for a while. This era finally passed and things went back to normal, but it was of historic proportions and seemed the worst thing I told them about.

I certainly hope that isn't true! It was only a dream.. And I've read speculation that such things could happen because of water shortages and such, so it's in my consciousness already.

That sleeping bigfoot pic..

2011-08-26T22:39:00.003-04:00

I heard about that picture in 2005 from Gregg Clay. According to my notes, he said you could see the creature breathing. He did not say that it stood up and walked away. I think he said the battery in the video camera cuts out before anything real interesting can be revealed.

He agreed with me that such a thing would be rather convenient to someone wanting to create a hoax.

I know this is a newspaper picture of a video grab, but taking what Gregg said in 2005, I can't believe that I'm going to be any more convinced by the actual video.

My feeling all along has been that there was plenty of evidence of a hoax, so the videos must be very good, in my mind, to get beyond that.

I keep thinking about the day I watched the now-destroyed video of a creature that looked every bit a costumed human walking with an exaggerated arm swing. I remember how the witness kept pointing to the video and saying, "see the muscle movement? Right there!" No matter how many times he said it, I never did see it. I don't think there ever was any muscle movement apparent in that video.

Now where would he have gotten the idea of muscle movement? From bigfoot researchers, of course. We talk about the movement apparent in the Patterson/Gimlin film all the the time.

Now, let's say that it was a human in a suit. Let that suit get a little more dirty, so the fur clumps up, and that could be what you are looking at right there.

Now why would the fur be dirty and clumped when it had before been, as I noted at the time, so clean and well groomed as to suggest the creature (if it were a real creature) lived a much better life than we had imagined? Well, because I pointed out right then and there that it sure did look clean and well groomed, and how unusual that would be.

How many hoaxers worth their salt would miss a great tip like that?

You can't see color in the picture because it's from a newspaper, but I would just point out how every hair seems to be the same pigment.

Just like the creature in the destroyed video.

And just like a suit.

2011-08-26T22:04:00.000-04:00

I keep dreaming of my old hometown in southern Mississippi, which I lived in for seven years or so, from middle school through high school and my early college years. Of course, I lived through several hurricanes down there. I guess the message is that I'll be in that "space" again, even if in another region of the US now.

I remember those days --candles, no air conditioning, and long periods of rain and wind. Waiting.

See you on the other side..

Earthquake on Tuesday, Hurricane on Saturday -- what did I do?

2011-08-24T18:41:00.001-04:00

More scary disaster type threats in one week than I am used to.

Because I am used to, like, zero.

A little after 1am Thursday morning, another quake shook the house. This one a 4.5.

Roswell debris not of this earth

2011-08-01T12:11:00.000-04:00

It's the small pieces they couldn't find in 1947..

A lot of recent evidence points to Roswell having been exactly what was described in the first news accounts way back when.

The UFO Museum put up the money, and the results were back in five days. Kimbler says he almost fell over when he saw the information. The ratios were off, and as he puts it there were only two answers to explain the results, “either the lab made an analytical error or the material is not from Earth.”

And you can also read what Anthony Bragalia has been up to over at The Bragalia Files. It's all very interesting and suggestive that there's much more to the story.

I had no deep interest in UFOs and aliens. I read about it along with everything else I read about, but it wasn't a main point of interest. Then one day last year, my son and I watched a very strange looking craft hover very low over our neighborhood, and then smoothly accelerate to nothing in less than 8 seconds. It was huge, and it was fast. If my son hadn't seen it, I'd have thought I had simply hallucinated It was broad daylight and it hung so obviously in the sky. Why didn't anyone else see it?

That's a mystery. But however that works out, do not forget that if UFOs of alien origen exist, they have always existed. Your life does not change one bit.

Dream interpretation test

2011-07-30T13:59:00.001-04:00

This picture thick with irony under the circumstances..

Recently I posted about a couple of dreams I'd had. I didn't outright say what I thought it was about, but my hunch was that it had to have something to do with the "debt ceiling" negotiations going on in the US.

Why would I dream about that? Well, let me just say that my family relies on the government continuing to pay its bills.

If I hadn't had the dream, I'd be sweating bullets right now.

Am I right to take comfort from a dream? My dream history makes me think so.

So if you are starting to sweat it, try to remain calm. There's nothing you or I can do about it anyway (beyond trying to contact our congressional representatives, and a fat lot of good that will do..)

More dreams that are probably manipulating you too

2011-07-24T01:48:00.001-04:00

Not my actual place of employment.

I have spoken before about dreams where someone is trying to get me to do something. It's quite often someone whom you might call "deeply flawed" in some publicly obvious way. Now that I've said that, you won't be too surprised about who showed up in a recent dream.

Unfortunately, I can't find where I wrote it down when it happened so I can't tell exactly when it was, but it was within the last two weeks or so.

I was doing some important work in an office when Senator Ted Kennedy came in and told me that I needed to issue some documents from the Senate. I asked him where the documents were, and he told me to write them myself. But I was to write them as if they were from the Senators. I pondered this a moment and then told him that I didn't know how to word such a thing as that and couldn't pull it off. So he dictated one to me. I wrote it down and understood it at the time, but of course now the sense of it is gone. Still, I told him that the language was such that I wasn't sure I could write a convincing one for the other Senators. He looked at me in an odd way, like he couldn't believe I was really that dumb! He left without another word and I wondered whether I was really going to do this or not.

After waking, I realized that this was another one of those dreams. Somebody wants me writing things as if they come from a higher authority.

No thanks.

Another dream recently was perhaps similar. I was out with a bunch of bigfoot researchers that I know, and we were crossing a river which had stepping-stone rocks about halfway across. The other guys ran in and when the rocks ended they just started wading across. I didn't want to do this because I couldn't tell what was in the water. (Water is a symbol of the chaotic and monstrous, you know -- well, among other things.) I was getting a bit stressed out that they were going into the water without regard for their own safety and then also stressed that I wasn't going with them.

At this point a weird dream moment happened. It turned out that I was an owl, and of course owls have wings!

It's true, owls have wings.

Now, the owl is a symbol of wisdom and maybe I'm sometimes wise, but I'm not that wise, so the owl is probably not really a good symbol for me. You have to watch out for flattery in dreams because it's a sign of its own. Maybe someone is trying to lead you by the nose..

Anyway, as happy as I was about being an owl and being able to catch up with my friends, I soon learned that there were FIGHTER PLANES in the air, and they would dive down to shoot at me the minute I took wing.

A bit of overkill, don't you think?

Well, it was frightening, but the planes had a lot of trouble shooting me because they couldn't maneuver in tight enough spaces. They were just too big for the job, and I got away. But I did not catch up with my friends.

In a way, this does depict what happened when I dropped out of bigfoot research. But it also smacks of ye olde "ego trap."

"O ye are so wise, ye owl! Surely you should do something with all that wisdom."

Then I've also had several recent dreams which showed various dangerous situations that caused me a leg wound. The leg wound is a symbol with a rich tradition in English, being the wound given to the king in the "Fisher King" myth, and adapted to some King Arthur tales. With a wounded leg, you can't follow your path, see.

It all builds to something if you let it.

One last dream before I go -- I was wrestling with a lizard man who had a whip that had some technology in it that I wanted. He was rather friendly for an enemy, and I could tell from the look in his eye that he wasn't really fighting me. On waking, I thought he was really trying to manipulate me into taking that whip.

Roleplaying games have that covered.

And the really interesting thing? He looked like a bigfoot when he wanted to.

Even if you are inclined to believe that there's something to dreams, you shouldn't take any of these at face value. Someone -- hey, maybe it's just my own twisted subconscious, right? -- but someone, somewhere, wants me to do something and isn't being straight about it.

Dream - the exploding rocket, and the fat managers who don't care

2011-07-23T14:19:00.003-04:00

Ooops..

I had this dream on June 22 and at the time I wasn't sure what it referred to. Have a look:

We were at a vacation place in the mountains. The house was old but well built. I went walking and saw a huge fat rocket explode. I thought it might fall on me but momentum took it away from us. Instead, fiery foam fell, which I feared would burn the town up, but the fire went out quickly and there was only the foam left. People worried about what was in the foam, but it wasn’t otherwise harmful. Went to a store where there weren’t enough employees to help us. The management, and there were a lot of them, were in the back just sitting around. I yelled at the regional supervisor that what they were doing was unacceptable, but he ran away from me. When I left I heard a lot of meowing cats who were frightened by the foam event. I consoled some of them.

I don't often have dreams that refer to larger events, but I do sometimes. In this case, I think the dream refers to something that will happen to our larger culture at least at some level. Because a jet or a rocket refer to "paths" that many people take together. A jet is obvious, because so many different people are onboard. The rocket is less obvious, but it takes many people to build and operate a rocket.

The rocket dream is meant to reassure me that no matter how bad things look at first, it won't be as bad as it appears.

A store, in the spiritual, dream sense, is a place where we get those things that we use to make our lives. Our abilities, opportunities, and life lessons can be thought of as "food" in a spiritual sense, out of which we make our spiritual selves are formed, in much the same way our physical bodies are built out of the physical foods we eat.

In this situation, the "managers" are spiritual agents of some sort. But I don't believe anything happens in this world, at least anything big enough to be described by rockets launching, happens without these spiritual agents being involved. Their attitude is that of someone who knows what's happening right now doesn't matter to them. When I went looking for the regional supervisor, he gave me an "oh crap!" look and ran away quickly. I doubt this is because the fellow is afraid of me, but because he does not want to give away something.

There are a few things going on in our world around us that could fit these facts. So I'm passing this dream along to reassure readers that maybe things in the outer world, when they start looking bad, aren't really as bad as they look.

Now I gotta go console some cats..

What? I'm not sweatin' it..

Didn't we just do this?

2011-07-23T00:57:00.000-04:00

Image credit treehugger

Just a brutal day on the East coast, where I live. It's still in the upper 80s, or was last I checked, with a heat index of 96.

Computers that don't need electronics

2011-07-01T09:30:00.004-04:00

What is a vertical cavity quantum switch?

Jin sees a great deal of potential for using an all-optical switch for Internet routers. He points out that energy consumption around the world is massive from Internet routers: “One of the major problems of the conventional Internet router is that it employs a optics-electronics-optics (O/E/O) interface, which requires additional energy to exchange the information carried by photons to electrons then go back to photons. To Use an all-optical switch, which means a light beam directly controlled by another light beam, could possibly cut off the additional energy consumption due to the O/E/O interface.”

There is also potential to use all-optical switches to help more effectively reduce the size of computers. “Scaling down computer systems which can cause extra delay in short electronic wires, which further blocks the data transfer rate,” Jin explains. “To do the interconnection using optics would possibly avoid the delay and distortion in the conventional electrical interconnection.” Without the some of the drawbacks of electronics-based computing, an all-optical switch could ultimately overcome the current bottleneck of electronic chips.

Computers and other technological devices will eventually become so small that they can be easily intertwined with biology and you couldn't even see it. What if such technology has already been developed? This would help explain some things that otherwise can't be explained right now.

For an example, this is my own explanation for what bigfoot is -- not a biological entity per se, but a biological construction using methods advanced far beyond our own.

Anything walking around in the woods that appears to be alive but has eyes that light up independently of a reflective source is either a) your imagination running away with you, or b) a construction of some sort.

If that's true, the question isn't what is a bigfoot or does it exist, but who owns them?

Never forget that we arose on this planet about a billion years after life was possible. Plenty of time for someone somewhere to get quite a head-start.

LATER: Speaking of bigfoot, if you ever wanted to see a comprehensive list of bigfoot on film, here's your place to do it.

"BUT ALL WILL BE WELL, AND EVERY KIND OF THING WILL BE WELL."

2011-06-26T12:17:00.001-04:00

Julian of Norwich (c.1342-aft.1416)
============================================================
"BUT ALL WILL BE WELL, AND EVERY KIND OF THING WILL BE WELL."
============================================================
In 1373, when she was 30 years old, an Englishwoman had a visionary experience during a serious illness. After she had thought about it --- perhaps soon after the experience, perhaps as much as fifteen years later --- she wrote a relatively brief account of the visions and what they meant to her. But in 1393, she was still meditating on her experience and perhaps had begun to write a longer, more theologically-centered analysis. By 1394 she had become an anchorite, living in a cell attached to the parish church of St. Julian in Norwich (which may be the reason for the name we know her by); she was visited there by Margery Kempe in about 1413, and she was still living there in 1416.

This is all we know of Julian's life. Some scholars believe that she was at one time a member of a religious community; others think not. Some think that she wrote out her book (which modern editors call Showings or Revelations of Divine Love); others believe that the work was dictated.

We do know from Showings that she was well-read in scripture and in spiritual works, both older and contemporary, so somewhere she had access to a good library. Her writing style is not the least bit naive: she handles complex thoughts clearly and is rhetorically effective. The rhetoric is perhaps easier to see in the first, shorter text; the complexity in the later, longer text.

Julian's emphasis on God's love and desire for human salvation becomes more significant when one thinks of the period in which she wrote. The Black Death came not only in 1349; it came again and again for over a century. The Church on whose faith Julian relied was in schism, with two or more popes claiming authority, from 1378 to 1417. Monastic writers and parish priests were teaching that all this was a punishment from an angry God. It is as if Julian saw the need to offer an antidote to the pervasive fear of sin and death and damnation; in both of her texts, she did.

Source.

I bolded the serious illness part, because Julian thought that she was dying, and in fact had last rites delivered. It's possible that her experiences were something like a near-death experience.

She interpreted her experiences in a completely Christian context. I think it has meaning whether you are Christian or not. Because I had a sort of weak shadow of her experience, and I got that message too.

"BUT ALL WILL BE WELL, AND EVERY KIND OF THING WILL BE WELL."

Arizona on fire, Missouri river jumps levees

2011-06-19T22:05:00.001-04:00

I vaguely recall reading something.. I wish I could remember what or where it was, but a guy who called himself a prophet said something along these lines, "at first the people won't realize that things have changed, but disasters will pile up one on top of another until people can't ignore it anymore."

I don't know if that means anything, but I'm haunted by it right about now.

Of course, it's not just in the US either -- "Global Weirding"

2011-06-16T11:29:00.000-04:00

From the Guardian:

Welcome to the climate rollercoaster, or what is being coined the "new normal" of weather. What was, until quite recently, predictable, temperate, mild and equable British weather, guaranteed to be warmish and wettish, ensuring green lawns in August, now sees the seasons reversed and temperature and rainfall records broken almost every year. When Kent receives as much rain (4mm) in May as Timbuktu, Manchester has more sunshine than Marbella, and soils in southern England are drier than those in Egypt, something is happening.

Sober government scientists at the centre for hydrology and ecology are openly using words like "remarkable", "unprecedented" and "shocking" to describe the recent physical state of Britain this year, but the extremes we are experiencing in 2011 are nothing to the scale of what has been taking place elsewhere recently.

Last year, more than 2m sq km of eastern Europe and Russia scorched. An extra 50,000 people died as temperatures stayed more than 6C above normal for many weeks, crops were devastated and hunderds of giant wild fires broke out. The price of wheat and other foods rose as two thirds of the continent experienced its hottest summer in around 500 years.

I like that phrase, "global weirding."

If you didn't want to believe me..

2011-06-13T11:10:00.003-04:00

Well, it's not just me saying that disasters are the new normal. (And of course I'm nowhere near the first to have said or thought it, though my thinking this way goes back a little. Here's my first mention of my fears on this blog. Note how many new disasters we could add to the list there since I wrote it..)

Now the New Yorker has weighed in.

For decades, climate scientists have predicted that, as global temperatures rose, the side effects would include deeper droughts, more intense flooding, and more ferocious storms. The details of these forecasts are immensely complicated, but the underlying science is pretty simple. Warm air can hold more moisture. This means that there is greater evaporation. It also means that there is more water, and hence more energy, available to the system.

What we are seeing now is these predictions being borne out. If no particular flood or drought or storm can be directly attributed to climate change—there’s always the possibility that any single event was just a random occurrence—the over-all trend toward more extreme weather follows from the heating of the earth. As the cover of Newsweek declared last week, “weather panic” is the “new normal.” The larger problem is that this “new normal” won’t last. Each additional ton of carbon dioxide that’s spewed into the atmosphere contributes to further warming, thus increasing the risk of violent weather. The day after the President visited Joplin, Fatih Birol, the chief economist for the International Energy Agency, in Paris, announced that, despite the economic slowdown, global CO2 emissions last year rose by a record amount, to almost thirty-one billion metric tons. “I am very worried,” Birol said. “This is the worst news on emissions.”

Note the mention of Newsweek's cover, which I missed. Probably refers to this story.

UPDATE: You have to watch this:

Disasters the new normal?

2011-06-10T12:42:00.002-04:00

Following on my update of yesterday's post, I'm starting to get a sinking feeling that things are going to be worse than anyone thought, sooner than anyone thought. And I'm not alone in thinking that -- actual weather scientists have said as much too:

Stu Ostro, senior meteorologist at The Weather Channel tells Here & Now, “I’m skeptical by nature. It’s a healthy part of the scientific process and we’ve had wacky weather since the beginning of time, but I started seeing patterns in weather that were not explained by natural variability.”

Ostro says climate and weather are fundamentally linked.

He adds, “It makes sense that if the climate is changing, the weather will change. And what were seeing today is consistent with what we would expect to see in a warming world.”

(You can see an interactive map of recent bad weather at the original link.)

Tornados, floods, wildfires, hurricanes, heatwaves, drought -- the new normal?

I sure hope not. But other scientists are making the same case:

Dramatic swings between very wet, very dry and catastrophically stormy weather are likely to be the norm from now on, according to scientists who point to an overall warmer global climate as the source of the new meteorological reality.

“It's a new normal, and I really do think that global weirding is the best way to describe what we're seeing,” Texas Tech University climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe told reporters.

While it’s impossible to point to climate change as the cause of any single event, such as the devastating Joplin, Mo., tornado on May 22, Hayhoe says the pervasive background of a warmer global climate now has an impact on every storm, heat wave and wintry chill.

I've bolded that last bit to answer the oft-heard chestnut, "How can it be global warming if the winters are getting colder!" or "Look at all this snow, global warming my behind!" Putting more energy into the system means all the weather patterns are affected, and can even mean colder winters in some places.

As disasters increase, so too does their cost on society. You can bet that your government, no matter where you live, has not put aside money to pay for this. Nor, it seems, does the insurance industry have any clear idea what to do if disasters continue to mount in number.

Well, the time to start thinking about it is now.

(All these disasters have grown to, like, Biblical proportions. Could it be..?)

I can't stand reality TV!

Holy heatwave, Batman..

2011-06-09T16:15:00.003-04:00

Click to enlarge

UPDATE: DC reached a temp of 102 yesterday, tying their all time high for June, set in 1874. But it was hot all over the East coast, as this graphic of record highs set or tied from the Washington Post shows:

Record highs were also set at Baltimore-Washington International Marshall and Dulles International airports Thursday, which hit 100 and 97, respectively. At BWI, which climbed to 99 Wednesday, it was also the second straight record-hot day. Philadelphia (99 degrees) and Atlantic City (102) were among many other cities in the mid-Atlantic to set record highs Thursday.
Fewer than 10 days into June, Washington has already reached at least 95 degrees five times. The annual average is between seven and eight such days.

Is this just normal variation, or part of a trend? Unfortunately, if it's a trend, we're still too early in it to be able to say. If it's normal variation, dang it sucks and I can't wait for it to be over.

The Hidden Reality: Multiple universes and parallel worlds

2011-06-08T14:56:00.002-04:00

Brian Greene's new book, The Hidden Reality, is a fine introduction to ideas about multiple universes. Like Michio Kaku's Parallel Worlds, it's an introduction and not a thorough explanation of a particular theory, though it's still pretty dense if you aren't into this sort of thing. But as an introduction, it's very thorough, including just about everything you might ever have heard about multiple universes.

Brian Greene is one of my favorite science writers. He's written some downright awesome books that really take you into the world of theoretical physics in a way that's both deeply intellectual and easy for a non-scientist to grasp. This is not an easy thing to do, but Brian Greene makes it feel easy as you read along. This ability to bring the stupendously complex within reach of the average reader is something to be cherished in a science writer. Greene makes our entry into the thoughts and ideas that have created and sustained the various theories about multiple universes an easy one.

So, why do scientists have to take the idea of multiple universes seriously? Greene makes the case in his introduction.

Quantum mechanics broke the mold of the previous framework, classical mechanics, by establishing that the predictions of science are necessarily probabilistic. We can predict the odds of attaining one outcome, we can predict the odds of another, but we generally can't predict which will actually happen. This well-known departure from hundreds of years of scientific thought is surprising enough. But there's a more confounding aspect of quantum theory that receives less attention. After decades of closely studying quantum mechanics, and after having accumulated a wealth of data confirming its probabilistic predictions, no one has been able to explain why only one of the many possible outcomes in any given situation actually happens. When we do experiments, when we examine the world, we all agree that we encounter a single definite reality. Yet, more than a century after the quantum revolution began, there is no consensus among the world's physicists as to how this basic fact is compatible with the theory's mathematical expression.

Over the years, this substantial gap in understanding has inspired many creative proposals, but the most startling was among the first. Maybe, the early suggestion went, the familiar notion that any given experiment has one and only one outcome is flawed. The mathematics underlying quantum mechanics -- or at least, one perspective on the math -- suggests that all possible outcomes happen, each inhabiting its own separate universe. If a quantum calculation predicts that a particle might be here, or it might be there, then in one universe it is here, and in another it is there. And in each such universe there's a copy of you witnessing one or the other outcome, thinking -- incorrectly -- that your reality is the only reality. When you realize that quantum mechanics underlies all physical processes, from the fusing of atoms in the sun to the neural firings that constitute the stuff of thought, the far-reaching implications of the proposal become apparent. It says that there's no such thing as a road untraveled.

This is Greene's introduction to Hugh Everett's Many World's hypothesis, though he holds off on naming it until the second chapter. I bring this up because Everett's hypothesis was controversial -- so controversial that his advisor, John Wheeler, (reacting to Neils Bohr's "icy" reception of the original thesis) edited his paper into a weaker form of the theory before he would allow Everett to submit it for publication. (However, Everett "stuck it to the man" by sneaking most of his "strong form" of the theory back in as a note that he did not show Wheeler before submitting the paper.)

The history of quantum mechanics is replete with this kind of fudging of the theories most stark implications. The Copenhagen interpretation of Bohr and Heisenberg arose as a response to the exotic strangeness of quantum mechanics. In essence, the leading luminaries of quantum mechanics simply waved their hands and said, "Ignore what it implies, just use the math!" They called for a "collapse of the wave function," something no one has ever observed, nor, seemingly, can observe, (which is really a form of this:

-- one of my all-time favorite science cartoons). But Everett insisted on taking quantum mechanics and its implications seriously and proposed his theory anyway. It was ignored for many years, but the pesky thing is -- it makes sense of quantum weirdness in a way no other formulation of the theory can. But the many worlds hypothesis is in itself weird, and because of that weirdness, this major implication of quantum mechanics was actively suppressed.

A certain fecundity of "worlds" is a recurring theme in modern science. We've got extra dimensions for strings in string theory, extra worlds in quantum mechanics, extra dimensions on branes in brane theory -- we may have to accept that we live in a "lagniappe" universe; we are always getting a little something extra the further we delve into reality. Why is this?

"It's not that physicists are standing ready," writes Greene, "multiverse nets in their hands, seeking to snare any passing theory that might be slotted, however awkwardly, into a parallel-universe paradigm. Rather, all of the parallel-universe proposals . . . emerge unbidden from the mathematics of theories developed to explain conventional data and observations."

Of the many theories discussed in the book, the one that I find most interesting has to do with how our three-dimensional world may be a holographic projection of a two-dimensional world. If you've read the classic work The Holographic Universe by Michael Talbot, now twenty years old, and liked it, you will enjoy hearing how things have progressed since then to the point that it seems to some physicists that there are two versions of reality -- a 2d and a 3d version -- such that using equations from one to solve problems in another is a fundamental part of a new direction of quantum mechanics developed by modern physicists. As Greene points out, this gives us a new twist on Plato's parable of the cave. Maybe it's not the people casting shadows, but the shadows casting people..

That, and many other bits of thought-food are contained in the book, which is well worth your trouble in reading.

Down the garden path

2011-06-02T09:47:00.002-04:00

Longtime readers will be aware that I have come to see the paranormal as an attempt to lead us somewhere -- which is essentially Jaques Vallee's theory from long ago. But here's the thing, I am thinking lately -- whatever is really going on, the fact someone else might be in control of the effect on our perceptions and our thoughts about what happened ought to enter the theorizing from the get go.

So now I think how I was led to the idea espoused in Vallee's theory, even before I had become familiar with Vallee's formulation of it. (It would be fair to say, too, that I could not have articulated it until after I had read Vallee's formulation of it.)

In other words, I'm made somewhat suspicious of that theory because it seems to be so obviously indicated by the paranormal events in question! It's like some kind of cosmic double-super-secret-fakeout.

I am therefore a bit less inclined to believe Vallee's theory every time I hear that someone else has come to the same conclusions. So, for instance, when Paul Kimble writes a blog post called "The Unified Theory of the Paranormal," in which he says

. . . I think Jacques Vallee was essentially right. Vallee proposed that there is a genuine UFO phenomenon which has been active throughout human history, and which appears in various forms to different cultures. In his opinion, the intelligence behind the phenomenon has been engaged in social manipulation by using deception on the humans with whom they interact. In essence, we have been living in their reality show.

I would go further than Vallee, however, and suggest that all paranormal phenomena are interrelated, and a manifestation of the same non-human intelligence. Thus, ghosts and UFOs, for example, are simply different ways of trying to achieve the same effect.

..and this happens to be what I have come to believe (and others too; check out the comments to Kimble's post) -- rather than saying, "right on!" and feeling as if my position is bolstered by such a luminary having joined the fray on my side, I'm saying, "hold on.."

What if that's what they want us to think?

I'm laughing as I write this because, of course, that's a ridiculous position to take. If agreement that evidence leads us in one theoretical direction is taken as evidence that the theory is wrong, we will never come to an agreement on any theory. But I'm also serious because we have noted, some of us at least, that whatever is going on in our strange world, it appears to be directed in many cases by an intelligence that engages in deception. It wants to hide its intentions. And if that particular theory is correct, then we do have to be careful of our conclusions. We don't want to be led down the garden path.

Knock on wood

2011-06-01T15:55:00.013-04:00

I don't particularly pay attention to bigfoot researchers anymore, so I don't know a lot about this particular brouhaha that I saw on Phantoms and Monsters. Apparently, Matt Moneymaker has said aloud (on his new show) that he was the first to discover wood knocking, a behavior that bigfoot researchers ascribe to their quarry. Someone disagreed somewhere, citing a 1993 book, and Moneymaker offered this rebuttal:

That’s pretty weak...a book published in 1993 about a famous indian story teller. It doesn’t count. I had already been talking about that behavior for a year or more on the Internet (and debating with all the people who were saying I was crazy to suggest that) while that book was being assembled. I had been saying that bigfoots use knocks to locate eachother prior to 92, but all you have is the claim by a famous “story teller” in a 1993 book...that he knew they did that long ago. It doesn’t count.

Let’s see Titmus’ writings saying he did wood knocks back and forth with a sasquatch in BC...not just someone’s “recollection” of him talking about that.

I'm not sure what book they are referring to, but it isn't the right one if it was published in 1993. You have to go back to at least 1976, and I'd bet further back than that even, to find the first mention of wood knocking. But I'm sure it was mentioned in Slate and Berry's 1976 book Bigfoot. I remember that I mentioned this fact in my review of that book on Blogsquatcher some while back now. And I also remember that I told Chris Noel, who had filmed Matt Moneymaker making this very same claim some years ago, that I had found that reference in the book, and that he ought to edit that part out of his film and let Matt know that he'd made a mistake.

It's one thing to be wrong about something because we are all wrong about something more often than any of us wants to have enumerated. So on this level, so what? Matt was wrong about something.

But there's another level too. How much of an expert on bigfoot can you really be to think that you discovered the technique of wood knocking in the 1990s? I know for certain that I read about this in Slate and Berry's book, and I have a hunch there's a reference that goes much further back. I'd have to look for it (and why the hell would I do that now? I'm not claiming to be a bigfoot expert), but I have the faintest memory of finding it from a book published in the 1960s.

This is one of the reasons bigfoot researchers get a (deserved) bad rap. Someone who is truly interested in knowledge about bigfoot should certainly spend some time gathering what is already known and written about it. This is what scientists and scholars do. There's not even all that much to read compared to other similar pursuits.

I went back to my archives and found my mention of wood knocking in Slate and Berry's Bigfoot. Here is that little tidbit as I wrote it up then:

Think wood knocking is new? (Some prominent researchers I know seem to have thought it was of more recent vintage.) No, Berry and the others recognized it as a signal from bigfoot during the Sierra Sounds episode.

"It made itself known with a sharp rap of wood against wood, a double rap echoing from a ridgeline above camp."

And remember, that’s knowledge that goes back at least to 1972, though probably much further back.

That last point is worth noting -- the book came out in '76, but Berry was talking about something that happened in 1972. Seems a serious "researcher" should know these facts.

LATER: And let me point out, this isn't just a criticism of Moneymaker, who certainly should've done a little research during his time in the field, but of bigfoot research in general. I know he has not been shy about making this claim, and over the years nobody has known enough about the facts to set him straight?

EVEN LATER: I still haven't seen the episode of Finding Bigfoot that has some people in a mild conniption over what Matt said, but I did find Matt's bio on the Finding Bigfoot website.

There among the claims Matt makes is this one:

• ... the first to formally describe the knock sounds made by bigfoots in 1992, at a scientific conference at Rutgers University for the International Society of Cryptozoology.  

If the issue is whether Matt was the first to notice that bigfoot did this (I prefer the singular-plural "bigfoot" rather than "bigfoots" or.. shudder.. "bigfeet") then he would be wrong to claim it. He would also be wrong to claim to be the first to get it into print. But if he said in the program what is written on his bio, that he was the first to formally describe it -- the only issue would be what counts as formally describing something in bigfoot research. Would Alan Berry's book count? I don't know, I guess you'd have to ask the high muckimucks of bigfootery.

But in any event, Matt wouldn't seem to have made an egregious error if he followed his bio in the program. (Unfortunately it doesn't seem that he did, but see below for that.)

Interestingly enough, it appears he really didn't know about what Berry had experienced even though he knows him, as is evidenced in a comment he left on a guest post on Cryptomundo by Don Frew.

Before we get to that, let's look over Frew's blogging efforts. In the Cryptomundo post, Frew quotes Moneymaker's statement from the program in these words:

“Just so you know, one of my claims to fame in the Bigfoot world is that I was the one who discovered that Bigfoots do wood knocks, and that figured out that if you make sounds that they’ll respond. No other Bigfoot researcher had ever figured that out or knew that before, because they didn’t really go into the field that often.”

This is quite a bit different from the more restrained bio comment, and, yes, if true, an egregious lack of knowledge about what he's supposed to be an expert about. Tsk tsk, I say. Tsk tsk sir!

Frew has this to say about the "controversy," citing Slate and Berry's Bigfoot:

The use of a double-rap on wood and the use of call and response is described several times in this book, published in 1976 and describing work done in 1972-74. When Alan went on KGO radio in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1976 and played recordings of the sounds he had heard, I called in to say that I’d heard the same sounds at my own field site. This led to many years of working together and many opportunities to use the call and response and use the sound of rapping on wood to call the creatures closer to our campsite. (I have personally used the wood knocks and whistles to coax a Bigfoot close enough to be seen in daylight.)
I spoke with anthropologist Jane Goodall about this double-rap phenomenon in 1977. She confirmed that chimpanzees often do something similar when entering a valley as a way of announcing their presence and listening for a response.
Before Moneymaker says that these statements were only published in one obscure book, I hasten to add that Alan’s recordings were the subject of an academic paper presented at the “Sasquatch and Similar Phenomena” conference held by the University of British Columbia in Vancouver in 1978 — an event which most of the leading Bigfoot researchers attended and the papers of which were collected in the volume Manlike Monsters on Trial (ed. by Marjorie Halpin & Michael M. Ames, University of British Columbia Press, Vancouver, 1980). The recordings have been available to the public – first on LP and then digitally – for almost 35 years.

Frew ends with this:

I am NOT saying that Alan Berry (or I) was the first to “discover” the wood knocks and/or call and response phenomenon with Bigfoot… there were probably other folks who noticed this before us. I AM saying that there were researchers talking about this in the Bigfoot community a full 10 years before Moneymaker says he first got involved, and that he should know that and not claim otherwise.

Which is pretty much what I wanted to say, but Frew said it with more authority, being an actual participant in bigfoot events in the 1970s.

To which Matt responded:

You’re right, Don. They did mention hearing that in their book. I think John Green’s book mentions a witness describing “thumping” sounds also. I never said I was the first person to hear those sounds. I said I was the first person to describe how bigfoots use those sounds to locate each other and warn each other of human intruders, and the first to actually put them to use … with lots of participant researchers in tow. That’s a whole different thing than merely hearing them.
Also, Don, did you document using wood knocks in the 1970’s … or did you have many other people with you ?? to confirm you were actually doing them back then? and that you elicited a daylight encounter that way? I’m not asking for film or video to prove you did that, but were there others involved who could confirm your field work back then? Just wondering.

(LATE INSERTION: Comparing the phrases "I was the one who discovered that Bigfoots do wood knocks" and "I never said I was the first person to hear those sounds. I said I was the first person to describe how bigfoots use those sounds to locate each other and warn each other of human intruders" does not necessarily show a contradiction if by "wood knocks" in the first sentence Matt means "sounds used to locate each other" etc.)

So there it all is, the "wood knocking" controversy in all its fetid glory.

Actually, that's really not all there is to it. But if you want to keep up with it all, a better place would be Cryptomundo. Reading over that thread, I like how Loren Coleman gently chides Matt for his abrasive personal style, suggesting that people respond to that much more than anything he says, and Matt seems to totally miss the point of the remark. Maybe Matt is the trailblazer he says he is -- he's certainly a central figure in bigfoot research today. To his credit, I think it's fair to say that he's done more good than harm in popularizing bigfoot research. But subtle of mind or speech, alas, he is not..

Stages of paranormal belief, part 2

2011-05-26T10:44:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I put up a humorous graphic, but I was actually pretty serious about the stages. Let me list them out here for easier discussion:

The stages of paranormal belief

1. Ignorance -- at this point, one simply doesn't know about the paranormal subject in question. The immediate reaction is usually something pretty much like "WTF?" A reaction like that preserves our sense of "cool" without exposing us too much to a charge of idiocy.

2. Cognitive dissonance -- at this point we compare the world as we know it with the world as it would have to be to accomodate the paranormal elements we just learned about. This period is usually not very long because humans cannot stand the acute sense of discomfort aroused by cognitive dissonance.

3. Ridicule of the subject -- It's important to note that the laughter engendered here is not like that from a joke. This is a defensive maneuver which protects the psyche from fear. No amount of evidence suffices to bring the ridiculer out of this stance, as it is perceived as much too dangerous to budge from it. The fear is too great. (I think it's fair to say that we only ridicule that which we fear in some way.) Many people stay at this level because to progress further requires actual experience with the paranormal subject under consideration.

4. Experience -- at this level, one has actually experienced the paranormal subject personally. Here it is usually no longer possible to hold off the cognitive dissonance with defense measures like ridicule. Other strategies have to be found. (It is true that some people will simply lie to themselves and return to level 3.) For people who have experienced the truly strange, the beginning of their psychic misadventures might start right here. These folks will quickly pass through the prior levels and go on to level 5.

5. Become an investigator -- One prominent defense against the unknown is to try assiduously to make it known. Whether one joins an organization, or simply begins to study on ones own, the emphasis is on learning as much about the subject as one can to try to gain a sense of control.

6. Attain a state of knowing -- Here at last we can rest that we have met the unknown and conquered it. Note that the state of "knowing" here need not be actually reflective of reality. For example, no matter what the truth is, the belief that "Bigfoot is a relic hominid" would be protective enough of the psyche that it will serve. At this point, the new belief is defended as vigorously as the prior disbelief. In a way, we have returned to level 3, only now with an element of belief rather than stark disbelief.

I think we have to realize that, being human, we follow this pattern. I do it. You do it. We all do it.

I want to get off this merry-go-round. I think the only way to do that is to talk about all aspects of experience and examine them and the fear they arouse critically. It might be that the fear is itself a major component of the experience, and integral to understanding the effects of paranormal encounters. Paranormal encounters might, in fact, have as their purpose exposure of that fear.

It would be strange to think of paranormal experiences as having a purpose, but my own experience of this world suggests to me that we come here as students.

The Stages of Paranormal Belief

2011-05-25T19:05:00.000-04:00

Just when I thought I was out.. they pull me back in!

2011-05-25T14:11:00.002-04:00

Yes, like the mafia to Michael Corleone, the nefarious underworld of bigfootery calls me back again..

Actually, my friend Mark called and we had a nice chat. He had been to the Ohio Bigfoot Conference and told me about some things that went on there. Then we talked about this video.

I like the floppy hair of this creature. Costumes usually have that stiff, wiry hair, but this would have to be an actual wig on top if it's a costume judging from the way the hair moves. Of course, one never knows.

Mark also told me that Ron Morehead had talked a bit about the recording I made in Ohio back in 2007 (I think). Morehead thinks that recording somewhat vindicates his earlier Sierra Sounds recordings because the sounds are similar without being identical. I agree that they do sound similar, but I am wary of the recording I made because a known hoaxer was with me who later made the cryptic comment, "You never would have even gotten that recording if it weren't for me." Since he had no part in selecting the site (my good friend Brian did that) nor did anything else that would reasonably account for that comment, I've wondered if he meant that he had made the sounds himself somehow. I recall at the time it happened I thought it was Morehead's Sierra Sounds being "call blasted" at us. It could have happened that way, too, because we were in a location other bigfoot researchers knew about. But analyzing the sounds proved that wasn't what it was.

When I listen to it I hear at one point a tinny, screechy sound that might be feedback. If that isn't what it is, what is it?

Like every other bit of "bigfoot evidence" there is, that recording will have to be indeterminate. You can choose to accept it, but there are plenty of reasons to disregard it too. It's been so long since I thought about it, I can't direct you to the sound recording except to say that I know it's on Stan Courtney's site somewhere.

Talking to Mark always makes me realize the absolute best part of looking for bigfoot wasn't going out into the woods to search for the creature itself, it was always the people you were going out into the woods with.

Blogsquatcher on StanCourtney.com

2011-05-01T15:06:00.001-04:00

I have given Stan permission to post the old Blogsquatcher posts on his site. Eventually you will be able to find all of them over there -- though I can't imagine there's a general call for that!

Only Stan has my permission to post these in this fashion. So if you want to read 'em, read 'em here.

UFO message shows people don't read..

2011-04-24T11:49:00.001-04:00

There is a slight buzz in the air about an unclassified document from the NSA that people found on the FBI site.

Bloggers on other blogs have described it like this:

If the penny hasn’t dropped yet, This now unclassified document not only confirms the presence of extraterrestrials, but that the US Government has received deep space transmissions from a civilization outside our own solar system !

That would be awesome, except it isn't true. A very casual reading of the document in question will show that this is an exercise -- you know, playing as if -- that the NSA journal used to demonstrate some decrypting techniques. (See last two paragraphs of page 20.)

So the only disclosure here is that some UFO bloggers do not really read what they are posting. And that's too bad.

Blogging, like crime, does not pay..

2011-03-30T10:53:00.002-04:00

Maybe the two are related somehow?

I made an offer a few weeks ago -- the entire contents of the old Blogsquatcher site as a free gift for a donation of any size. I would like to thank SCM for the donation in the amount of $8, for which said blog contents were distributed as a .pdf.

Apart from that donation, there was nary a nibble. I guess ye olde Blogsquatcher is not much of an enticement..

It's off to the salt mines for me!

If you liked Fall from Heaven 2..

2011-03-29T17:12:00.001-04:00

If you like Fall from Heaven 2 and are considering installing the mod to your computer, have a look at this extension of FfH2, Master of Mana, which includes many elements that didn't make it into the original mod --

Here is the main site of the mod.

And here is a link to a quick-start guide.

Basically, everything changes -- the magic system, promotions, how you work the land -- but the milieu is still FfH2, with even more civs and leaders added. I've been fooling around with it and the very best part is IT RUNS FASTER ON MY ANCIENT MACHINE! This is because the lead modder redid a lot of the AI, coding it into the game rather than in python script. The advanced AI is also a selling point. The other civs will actually give you a good game. The modder is, I believe, still working on the AI so this is not even the final iteration.

The Sims and simulated reality

2011-03-29T14:09:00.005-04:00

He's not playing The Sims.

I often think of the argument that reality is a simulation, but not in terms of computers and brains hooked up via electrodes (the updated version of brains in vats?). There are various forms of the argument. The ones that interest me the most are Emigration:

In an emigration simulation, the participant enters the simulation from the outer reality, as in the brain-computer interface simulation, but to a much greater degree. On entry, the participant could use a variety of hypothetical methods to participate in the simulated reality including mind transfer to temporarily relocate their mental processing into a virtual-person. After the simulation is over, the participant's mind is restored along with all new memories and experience gained within[.]

And what Wikipedia calles "intermingled" which mingles elements of emigration and a full on simulation:

An intermingled simulation supports both types of consciousness: "players" from the outer reality who are visiting (as a brain-computer interface simulation) or emigrating, and virtual-people who are natives of the simulation and hence lack any physical body in the outer reality.

But I'm not thinking of these as absolutely describing how things are -- in other words, I don't think that we are people in virtual reality harnesses asleep to our ordinary realm of experience, as in the movie Avatar; rather, I think of this as a powerful metaphor that may accurately describe our condition as beings made of matter and consciousness, though the twain just barely meet.

So instead of a body in a virtual reality machine of some sort, if you think of yourself as some form of consciousness that ordinarily exists without a body, we're on the same page (along with Ralph Waldo Emerson).

There are many games that use an interface that replicates something like this kind of arrangement -- I think early entries in the genre are Populous and Black and White, both developed by Peter Molyneux. These so-called 'god games' put you in the perspective of a superior being, who watches and, to some extent, controls the actions of the tiny electronic peons that populate the world.

A recent game that expands upon those beginnings is The Sims Medieval (TSM).

I happen to have a copy of TSM (purely for research purposes, of course). In TSM, you guide one sim (or, sometimes, two sims) through various tasks until a quest objective is achieved. Along the way, you find that the strengths and weaknesses of your assigned sim will facilitate or complicate your job -- sometimes both.

Here's a for instance. The game has a set number of jobs for sims that you can control -- the Monarch, the Knight, the Spy, the Healer, the Wizard, the Merchant, two different Priests, the Bard, and the Blacksmith. Each of these jobs must be filled by a sim. You can create a sim for each job, or accept the pre-created sims. Being a contrary sort, I always create sims. Rather than attempt to get the better of the game, something that is commonly done, called powergaming, I try to give them interesting traits that I hope will lead to interesting stories.

Each sim gets two main traits and one fatal flaw. Those traits, and the fatal flaw, either help or hinder the sim in his or her achievements toward goals. For instance, the Bard character I created has the traits Eloquent and Fun Loving (what else does a Bard need?) and the fatal flaw Licentious. (Which means he wants lots of babes.)

Now how do his traits and fatal flaw affect his achievements? It's horrible -- his fun-loving trait means he gets a bit down if he hasn't done anything fun for too long, and the licentious trait has a similar effect. What this means is that he's not very good at being responsible and accomplishing his tasks and quest objectives, because doing so is not fun, and not getting him any babes.

Nevin the Bard reflects on how un-fun walking for miles is.

In a game like TSM, I'm not the Bard character. From time to time I do control him and try to get him to achieve something, but usually he's not the main character, and during that time he's off doing his own thing. When I come back to him I'll find that he has progressed, or regressed, in various ways while I wasn't paying attention.

Nevin should be doing something constructive, but instead he's camped out
at the Wizard's house reading a book.

This is a key insight, if you are ready for it, such as Emerson attempted to convey in his essay "The Oversoul." The little sim Bard is an ego, motivated by his two traits and his fatal flaw. But you are not that. "Neti, neti" is the Hindu chant that Joseph Campbell used to quote.

TSM introduces the concept of The Watcher, the name for the 'god' in the 'god game.' That's who you are supposed to be, guiding your sims to create a powerful kingdom. And you gain various achievements as you play that do not reflect any one character in the game, such as Legendary, the text of which reads, "Have 25 sims acquire Legendary Traits." This mechanic reinforces how you are not any single sim in the game.

But you control and influence a number of them over time. Something like living a number of lives and reincarnating, only all of them concurrently.

Now, as a game, The Sims Medieval definitely has that 'one more turn' quality. I can attest to this myself. The game devours minutes like a ravenous humpback eats krill. There is nothing particularly new in it, but the way each sim seems to have its own life really fascinates. I chortled with glee the first time I saw a guardsman shift from one foot to the other as he blasted one, waving away the bad air. My inner eight year old was deeply satisfied. (And do not let anyone tell you such gestures toward our physical nature are unrefined and lowbrow. If it was good enough for Chaucer, then it's good enough for me.)

Similarly, our existence here in the 3d world of forms may hold attractions for us that we scarcely appreciate while locked within our ego selves. We get caught up in our worldly goals, in our fleshy humanity, having forgotten, quite by design, what we might have come here for. A game like The Sims Medieval helps us to consider thoughts like these, especially if we are new to them. You might like to give it a try.

Game diary: Fall from Heaven 2 -- the Elohim, part 10

2011-03-28T00:01:00.004-04:00

This is the final installment of this diary. Here, we finally wind our way down to the end, which has been in our sights for some time now. How will it end? Will we get any kind of good story out of it?

I won't keep you waiting to find out.

BACK TO BUSINESS

Turn 552: Arendel Phaedra is asking to be a vassal state. I really don't think she needs the help so I'm going to refuse. I know what this sort of thing leads to..

Instead, I bribe the folks she's at war with to give her peace. That should take care of things for a bit.

Turn 555: Man, Niveus is an expensive city. Check out this list.

It costs us 23 gold each turn but only brings in 5 gold. Not a good value.

Cahir Abbey is still a cesspool, but it's getting a little better. At least the people are finally happy.

I've finished the Settler and will set him up in a spot that used to house a barbarian city Decius just destroyed. I need a Luridus to come over to sanctify that spot first, though, for the AC lowering effect. If creating that city doesn't allow me to create the new civ, I may not develop that city much further, since it becomes rather expensive. I could build a Summer or Winter Palace over here, which would lower costs considerably. I will certainly look into that if I can't spawn a new civ here.

Turn 556: Shrine of the Hero is complete, and a Luridus is starting the incantations to bring Corlindale back. It takes seven turns, however..

Turn 560: Ring of Sion, our newest colony city, was created. It turns out we can't liberate the cities to make a new civ. Maybe I have to do that before I take an ally? I'm not sure. Bummer. But look on the bright side, at least not everything is going our way. We can't convert Perpentach, our efforts to spread Empyrean have hit a brick wall, and we can't create Thessalonica's civ. This is the stuff great Elohim poetry is made of.

Oh shining Empyrean Lord, splendor of suns!
How we have been inconvenienced for you!
Have we not met with stern rebuffs?
Have our friends not tried to avoid us in the halls?
They turn the other way when they see us coming.
They will not sit at the same table with us.
They mumble excuses at our every invitation!
Oh great Empyrean Lord, how we have been inconvenienced for you!

Turn 562: Take a look at the Victory Conditions screen.

There is still no one who can even remotely challenge us for a win here. It's disappointing to see that Empyrean only accounts for %19, but the competitor, Fellowship of Leaves, has 1%. This is not a believing world, apparently. Bunch of atheists..

The Top 5 Cities screen is interesting too.

We have the two top slots, even though we were not able to make many Wonders. I would not have guessed that, actually. I would have thought Glens of Killybegs would make the list because of the Dies Diei, but I don't know why Cahir Abbey should be on there. It's a pit of stinks.

Turn 563: Corlindale returns. He's in Warrenpoint now, casting his spells to assist the city. Time passes, and nothing terribly exciting happens. This is the Elohim way. I note we never lost our +4 bonus to relations with anyone after he died. I could have sworn that happened to me before.. Wrong again!

We now have all the techs we want. We don't need some of the evil techs so I won't research them. We are working on Future Tech, which will give us a +1 in health and happiness in each city. You can keep researching it, and the bonuses stack. Considering the situation in Cahir Abbey, this is good news.

Turn 566: We are now 30 turns from victory if nothing changes. We have nine Man O' Wars in the water, and three more building. Our colonies continue to prosper, though they cost a lot. The Summer Palace will alleviate that problem. I'm sending the Archmage with Vitalize over to Ring of Sion simply because I am bored and want to make the ground all pretty.

Turn 570: Building the Winter Palace has really knocked our costs down to nothing.

Now even Ring of Sion is making a profit.

Turn 571: During the AI's turn, Os-Gabella of the Sheaim declares another pointless war on us. The only thing that can happen is Capria goes up there and kicks HER butt, because she can't get through Cardith Lorda to get to us.

But it does make our citizens extremely mad, and that means work stoppages. Time for Corlindale to cast Peace again.

Turn 572: The Ljosalfar asked to be a vassal state again. This time I'm going to say OK, so that we get another buffer. She might keep some of those fleets out of my waters. And, anyway, Corlindale is going to buy us 10 more turns of peace. Then I'll resurrect him again. That is, if I can. I actually don't know if you can do that more than once.. It would get sort of ridiculous if he can just keep doing it.

"Corlindale, the mosquitoes are getting pretty bad this season, could you..?"

Turn 575: Nothing is happening right now. I found that I can resurrect Corlindale again. Poor fellow.

"Dude, you gotta help me out. I can't get a minute's peace, my mother-in-law will NOT shut up.."

[Corlindale sighs, breaks out a cyanide tablet..]

Turn 581: Corlindale returns. I have signed a defensive pact with all the Overcouncil members. With Corlindale's ability to cast Peace and then resurrect before it expires, I don't really see how I can lose at this point.

Only 15 more turns until the Altar is finished. If we were expecting a huge all out war to break out to try and stop me, I don't think it's going to happen now. In fact, I could cast Sanctuary and make sure that it can't happen, with the 30 turns of safety behind my walls that affords. Then people could declare war, but couldn't get in to attack.

Looks like to me that the Elohim/Bannor alliance marked the moment where our victory was pretty well assured. Maybe one could go all the way back to turn one, when we had the great fortune of being bordered by two good civs and only one evil one, with a very defensible position available in that direction too. I've checked the victory table and nobody is even close to any victory that I can see. I suppose someone else could be working on the Altar and I wouldn't see that.

Turn 582: Well, at least the barbarians are showing some spunk:

Also, Flauros allied with Garrim Gyr. It's too late for that, dear. Unless something can happen that I'm not aware of. Arcane Lacuna could have put a real damper on my endgame, but Valledia the Even has already cast that. I don't think she can regain it because I know Flauros already used "Regain Birthright."

Turn 583: I went ahead and cast Sanctuary. What's the point in holding on to it? No one can enter Elohim lands for 30 turns. They can still declare war, for whatever good it will do them.

Turn 584: Just for fun I've sent a beastmaster out to collect some animals.

You can use the bears to create a +1 happiness modifier in cities by upgrading them to dancing bears. I don't know what you can do with the lions. Tigers, I recall, can only be used to build a zoo-like thing. Maybe lions are the same.

Turn 588: Life continues to be a pretty peaceful easy felling.

Turn 593: Three turns before finishing the Altar, and Os-Gabella declares war. Of course she does! But I had a defensive pact with all the Overcouncil states, so she just went to war with the entire Good world. Take that.

Maybe because I have Sanctuary going right now I don't have any unrest anywhere, and I'm still three turns away from a win.

Turn 595: It's something of an anticlimax at this point, but we're one turn away from finishing the Altar.

Then we can see what rating the game will give us for our, admittedly easily won, victory.

Turn 596: Here's the first announcement of the victory. It's rather subdued.

Also I note that I'm getting a Golden Age with the Altar. I guess I could continue playing, but I will not subject you to such a monstrosity.

The montage of pictures that go with the victory.

Is that our cities floating off into the heavens? I guess this is sort of like the trip to Alpha Centrauri in regular Civ IV.

And we're gone.

My ranking.

Wha..? AGAIN!?!?!?!? NOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooo…

Now that hardly seems fair. I played the Elohim the way they ought to be played, and the best I can do is Guybrush Threepwood. Well that is a fine how do you do.

I suppose I should not be upset since the ranking has military overtones, and the Elohim never showed any military prowess. Legendary diplomatic skills, yes, this they had in spades.

In this sense, they really do have quite a bit of control of the world situation. Not so much directly, but through their influence over other civs. If I did continue the game, I don't think the Elohim would necessarily ever come to dominate the world in a military sense, but their will would prevail. Corlindale would assure this.

But it was not always so. While the Elohim have always been able to influence the side of good, they have very little influence on the evil civs. The best they were ever able to do was convert Perpentach from an evil civ to a neutral one, but he never joined the Overcouncil.

The defining moment of the game, really, had nothing to do with the Elohim at all. As we saw during a brief conflict, Flauros had the power, and the will to project it; and having vassalized at least three other civs including the good dwarven civ the Luchuirp, she could have changed the outcome of the game. Her conversion to Order had nothing to do with either the Elohim, nor Capria, who never seems to have come into contact with her favorite religion. It must have derived from Cardith Lorda. Once Flauros converted, she became a stalwart member of the Overcouncil, voting with the Elohim on every measure proposed.

A word about the Overcouncil -- civs are free to join and leave it as they will. At its height, it had nine members, but by the end of the game it had only seven. Through the Overcouncil, I was able to influence the side of good to a very large degree, but this was always subject to the free will of the councilors (such as the AI can simulate free will, anyway). The final vote, for a council-wide defensive pact, was opposed by two civs -- Arendel Phaedra and Cardith Lorda -- but they were not so violently opposed as to declare "NEVER!" which they might have done, and stopping the vote. They were content to abide by the will of the council and remained members in good standing.

It was the unity of the side of good that produced this victory. It was also the unity of the good that doused any great conflict that might have arisen. The unfortunate unpleasantness between Arendel Phaedra and Cardith Lorda was quashed by the Overcouncil and had been smoothed over by the time the game ended.

The side of evil was never able to mount such a coalition, which assured their downfall. Os-Gabella's constant sniping at the Elohim did absolutely nothing beyond killing three Ecclesiastics on their way to convert some cities. She had no naval power with which to annoy us, and Capria was more than capable of dealing with her on the ground.

The inability to band together for long is the ultimate weakness of evil as depicted in this game. Unless a great leader arises from among them, taking control of all the others through vassalizing them, such as Flauros once threatened to do, they have little hope. And since they are dependent on that leadership, if it disappears, so too do their hopes of winning as they fracture and fragment into squabbling clans.

I suppose there is a larger lesson here?

Perhaps, perhaps not. But this, at any rate, is how it ends.

Book recommendations and a few thoughts

2011-03-27T14:05:00.003-04:00

About a month ago I had a very good, very long conversation with my friend Dave from Kentucky. He told me about some books that he thought highly of, and based on his recommendation, I bought them. And now I'm going to recommend them to you.

The first is Mirage Men by Mark Pilkington. I haven't finished this book yet, but I can already tell you that if you are at all interested in UFOs, you absolutely must read this book. It is full of the kinds of facts and details that the ordinary "believing" UFO researcher tends to ignore and forget. There is much in our past to suggest that a good number of famous UFO sightings were psyops used by governments, usually the US government, to foment certain ideas in public consciousness.

As a quick for instance, the famous Villas Boas abduction case. Villas Boas is a very credible witness, but what he was witness to includes details that can be explained by human beings using various psyop methods on him without his knowledge or consent to create the idea in his mind that he had indeed been abducted, and even sexually assaulted by aliens.

You have to read the book to get those details. And I can tell that it's worth the read, even if I haven't finished yet.

The other book is an older scholarly work dealing with the folklore of what we would now call sleep paralysis. There are some truly disturbing stories in it which many of my readers would enjoy perusing. The suggestion is made that, though we don't know what causes these episodes, it can't be the ordinary explanations that are on offer still today. So if you are interested, read The Terror that Comes in the Night by David Hufford. You'll probably have to find it used as it doesn't seem to still be in print, but I had no trouble getting a good copy.

During our chat, Dave and I discussed our own experiences with sleep paralysis and noted that we both had had the experience of having it apparently "shared" from one person to another. That's an odd coincidence that needs some investigating.

And reading Mirage Men, it's obvious that intelligence organizations were at least zealous to have people believe that they were causing these episodes of abductions and many UFO sightings. I'm not sure what to make of the fact that Pilkington's book is full of citations and stories from intelligence officials admitting as much themselves. We know that in other cases there have been things the intelligence community did not want people knowing about -- say experiments on living populations without consent -- that we only learned of through FOIA documents. So what does it mean that they are so blabbermouthed about these supposed intel operations? Is it simply disinfo?

Yet, as in the Villas Boas case, there are details that would tend to support an intel operation.

Sticks you right back on the fence, doesn't it?

I get the feeling that we are never going to really know what is going on.

Game diary: Fall from Heaven 2 -- the Elohim, part 9

2011-03-27T00:01:00.005-04:00

The difference between a good design and a bad design in a game is the difference between what's fun and what isn't.

We already talked about Elemental vs. Fall from Heaven 2, but let me give you another 'fer instance.' I found that I like online hockey sims. I don't really like watching hockey that much. In fact, I'd prefer an online American football sim, but there aren't any good ones that I've found.

I tried a couple of online hockey sims before I found one that I liked, Hockey Arena. The developers aren't natively English speaking I don't think, but even so, their game is tolerably well supported for those of us who do speak English. There are some language issues, but trail and error can get you past them.

Hockey Arena is well designed, partly because it borrows a few ideas from some games that came before it, but also because the designers realized that it would be a good idea to make sure that everyone could have fun by setting up a system much like English football, with lower rated teams playing in lower leagues. That's a simple, yet effective, way to keep people feeling like they can compete.

There was another game that I played -- I won't name it here -- that had the most confusing design elements. It seemed to be part betting game, part hockey game, but all made for the whims of powergamers. Newcomers were constantly being victimized by gamers who had been there longer.

Too, the game wasn't very realistic, and the designer admitted to me that he wasn't shooting for realism. He said he wanted to please the fans. I thought it seemed like he wanted to do what he wanted to do. More power to him, but he shouldn't be surprised that his game isn't very popular if he isn't willing to take an interest in what the gamers who don't already play his game might find fun.

BACK TO BUSINESS

The war is spreading in Erebus. Flauros has joined the fray, bringing her vassals with her. She has aligned against Falamar. I can hope that we won't be dragged into this, but I fear that we will. Any hostilities with Perpentach will cause my people to freak out. They are sick and tired of war with him. They aren't happy in war time in any case.

I have seen that it will take a good 100 turns to build that last piece of the Altar. If I get it started soon I will have little trouble completing it before the game ends. A glance at the victory screen shows us no one who is threatening to win any time soon.

Looking at the city screen, unbelievably, Warrenpoint is paying for itself already, but just barely. They pull in 12 coins while they cost 10. I can't complain about that, since Inishbofin only breaks even.

Cahir Abbey is still very unhappy. I've been busily building happy-making buildings for some time now. With no real war to speak of, I've been able to do this. Our navy is finally in decent shape. We have eight Man O' Wars, two Queen of the Lines and a Galleon. I'd like more ships, but need to catch up on these important city improvements. Capria's military prowess keeps any potential enemies from being able to directly threaten us on land, so the navy is all the more important now.

Turn 504: The world slips further into war. I can't keep up with who is at war with whom. I know that only Os-Gabella of the Sheaim, thus far, has declared war on us. We are just one turn away from creating our second settlement in the west, and maybe a half dozen turns away from getting the incense. It will be at least nine more turns before we can create an Archmage because, here's me forgetting something once again, you need another TECH for that.. Strength of Will. But we are on our way to getting it.

And thinking about it, I now realize I need another tech to get the Luridus upgrade. [Smacks forehead.] Sigh.. To be fair to myself, I usually have these techs by now on Noble difficulty. This has been quite a slog through the tech tree on Prince.

This world war is an unfortunate situation. We are in a position where we don't actually have to choose sides, but if we had to we should certainly wish to side with the elves. They have never done anything evil in all their time under our observation. Flauros, on the other hand, is bad even when she's good. The unfortunate part is Cardith Lorda has made himself an enemy of the elves! And he's aligned himself with the evil half of the world. It would be bad news to come to blows with him, but he is in the wrong here. We may have no choice is we are asked to choose a side but to have the war with Cardith Lorda that I always feared.

As a matter of 'real politic' we'd be much better off siding with Cardith and the evils. But I can't do that. It wouldn't make sense for the character of the Elohim, nor for me.

Turn 505: The city of Niveus has been built. The Incense plantation is constructed. We now simply wait for the roads to be finished, then for the tech to be researched (Theology)and then there will be four new Luriduses running around. Also, our Mage has cast Spring all over the desert around Warrenpoint, creating Plains there. Things are looking up!

One thing I haven't mentioned is that getting the Incense flowing will increase the happiness by +2 in every city, because you get a +1 bonus for each temple, and I have a Temple of Empyrean and a Pagan Temple in each. The more religions I get in my cities, the more temples I can build, and the more happiness the Incense brings. So we're obviously going to have to think about dropping that whole "one religion" thing. The Elohim are tolerant after all.

Turn 514: Now she's a lady..

..and now he's a man.

With his upgrade, he now has access to Vitalize, so the plains tiles will become grasslands tiles, and the cities will grow larger.

Turn 517: We have begun building the final part of the Altar of Luonnotar. Building up the city infrastructure has actually paid off. As of now, it will take 87 turns to complete the Altar. This may fluctuate as events make citizens angry or even kill some of them.

Both sides in the war keep trying to get me to join in the fray, and each time I put them off, I get a -1 in standing with them. It would take a while for them to get so angry that they'll declare war on me. I hope.

Now look at the scores on the right side of this picture (though look at the pretty grasslands springing up around Niveus, too).

I wonder why Flauros hasn't allied with someone? If she took on Garrim Gyr, for instance, she'd pass us for the top spot. If she allied with Cardith Lorda, she'd way pass us.

Sucks to be a vampire, I guess. (Ouch.)

Turn 520: Things didn't turn out so well for Jonas Endain.

I never liked him anyway. Maybe this will be a reason for the wars to end?

Turn 521: Perpentach has renounced the protection of Falamar and is free again. Free to be a pain in my ass..

Turn 524: Tsunke has adopted the Undercouncil, which tells you which side he is on. Is this the calm before the storm, or are we coasting to victory?

Because Niveus sits on a flood plain, it is growing rapidly. It's already size 4, while Warrenpoint remains a size 2 city.

I have both my workers over there getting things set up to transfer to the new colonial government. Theology is two turns away now.

Capria and I were elected leaders of the Overcouncil. Our first vote was to stop the war against Arendel Phaedra, the elvish queen. It will take four votes, and Capria and I have three between us (Chalid Astrakein grants you an extra vote because that is just how cool he is).

This is the longest period of peace we have had in some time. I doubt Perpentach will let it continue. He still hates me. And he is a dick like that.

Turn 526: The peace initiative succeeded with 6 of 7 votes. The only member voting "no" on the Stop the War Against Arendel Phaedra measure was -- Arendel Phaedra. Apparently she thought she was winning..

The peacemongering Elohim strike again!

Turn 527: Finally.

I'll just upgrade some Vicars here. And done, four new Luriduses commissioned.

Turn 531: My new Archmage in Glens of Killybegs can create an Aurealis of some considerable strength.. Must be because of our extra Sun Mana nodes. Nice!

Meanwhile, look at the fertile valley that lies between Warrenpoint and Niveus.

Just noticed that the AC has hit 20.. something bad is about to happen. I think the first thing is that all your lands take a sort of negative Vitality hit. After all the work I just did! It will cause rampant starvation in Cahir Abbey and environs.

As the AI takes its turn, Os-Gabella declares war on us. Again. Perpentach can't join her until turn 539 because we traded with him on turn 529. Would anyone else? Maybe Tasunke?

All the AIs will know that we are building the Altar now. Some of them may like us so much that they will not be able to go to war. But there are plenty of evil folk out there.

If Flauros should adopt Ashen Veil, which would be in character for her, then we would have a problem.

Turn 532: Slane is already starving again. They had increased to a size 14 city, but the war with Os-Gabella has caused striking.

Turn 537: Warrenpoint/Niveus is shaping up nicely. It's almost too pretty to give up!

But I want to found the new government, so I'm gonna. I'll have to leave a defensive force behind to help protect them until they get up to speed, or possibly forever, since Decius can be a bastard when he wants to be.

The new nation will be called the Elohim also, and their leader's name will be Thesselonica. I just need to get as much of the area Vitalized as I can now, because I won't be able to do it anymore once I hand over control of the colonies to Thesselonica. I can send more Settlers over there and repeat the procedure as often as like, now that I have access to Vitalize. The area is rich with resources. And I find the terraforming to be fun, actually.

But from a story standpoint, this game is so NOT delivering right now.

Is this because to be good and to spread peace does not make a good story? If that's the case, what is a story, really, and what is it for? Do we want to live in danger vicariously, to feel our pulses quicken, get a little mist of sweat on our brows, all in the safety of our home or office?

I hooked up another Sun Mana in the colonies, and now look at Chalid.

The Aurealis is pretty beastly now too.

So where are the enemies for smiting? Oh yeah, we keep making peace with them.. And though we've been in multiple wars, I don't believe we've lost more than two land units since the beginning of time. That one unfortunate Horse Archer at Coombe View, and the Monk that was eaten by a lion upon landing at the colony site.

Can you imagine their epic poetry? Each poem would begin with "And they all lived happily ever after." These people would have to regard a hangnail as a serious challenge. They must have amazing senior centers. All of their heroes live to a ripe old age rocking their great-grandchildren to sleep. Let's face it, if we were denizens of this pixellated planet, we'd want to live with the Elohim. It's the safest place to be.

The Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times," shows the tension between a good story and a good life. Good lives, it seems, are boring lives if you aren't living them yourself.

Turn 542: We are 56 turns from constructing the Altar. If I get to 40 turns without a war of consequence, I know that I will be able to make it unmolested, though declarations of war can still cause massive striking in my cities. But I can have Corlindale cast Peace, resurrect him, and cast Peace again, rinse, repeat, etc.

The strategy I've used on Noble seems to be just as effective on Prince. My good fortune of having two good neighbors effectively seal me off from everyone but Perpentach has probably been the most important factor, however. Getting Capria to agree to become my ally was also a huge step. She's a real handful for the evil civs.

Turn 544: Hmm. I just checked and I'm not able to create a new state from the colonies. Perhaps I need three at this difficulty? It only took two last game I played, though in regular Civilization it does require three cities to create a new country.

Can't you see their arguments in parliament? Pretty much the opposite of the American Revoloution. Their hoary gray heads solemnly regarding the speakers, politely listening.

"We MUST grant you independence!" says the Prime Minister.

"But we don't WANT independence!" say the colonists.

"Men may cry peace! peace!..but.." (fumbling for words here.)

"And? Where's the problem? Give me Loyalty, or give me a bad cup of coffee!"

"Bad coffee?" The homeland ministers are shocked by the suggestion of such hardships. "No, we don't want that. We don't want you to drink bad coffee. That would be terrible.."

Maybe I overdeveloped the colonies? There are a lot of little things I don't know about this game.

Turn 547: What the.. Somehow I have declared war on Cardith Lorda. This is seriously bad news! If you wanted interesting times, I believe they are here, finally. I am not prepared for a war with Cardith Lorda. I may have to use my World Spell to keep him out of my lands until I can build up defenses.

I realize that's boring now, but it sort of ensures the final days of the Altar will be fraught with strife. Yikes, as I wait for my turn to start, he's already sunk three of my Man O' Wars with his own.

This is bad news if I can't turn it around..

In a stroke of luck (when have I not had luck?) I get a chance to pass a law in the Overcouncil forcing the war to end. I only need three votes, and between us Capria and I have that. But somehow, I guess she must have started this war, because I sure didn't, and it said that we had declared war. So maybe she won't vote yes? I can only press the end turn button and hope..

But didn't I tell you? Cardith Lorda always pulls this crap. "Oh I'm a goody goody, don't worry 'bout me, de dum de dum don't mind us while we SNEAK ATTACK YER ASS AHHHHHAHAHAHAHA!

Turn 548: Yeah, only Cardith Lorda voted no. Bastard also sank two more ships and a fishing boat.

I'll remember this, Lorda! [Shakes fist.] Now I gotta rebuild my navy.

My navy is the red-headed stepchild of Erebus. Always getting whipped by everybody.

Once again, the Elohim peace ethic wins the day.

Turn 550: I'm going to build one more Settler and see if that lets me make the new country. I'd be disappointed if I couldn't get Thesselonica into the game. But I also need to really focus on defenses at home. Capria has a massive army, and they are constantly in my lands, so she'd be very helpful, but you can't really count on her to always be where you want her. I'll pull back a few units from the colonies, and get busy building others.

Turn 551: The list this time is about wealth again, which is meaningless so I won't even put it up. But I am going to make Corlindale cast Peace, which will kill him, so that I can get 10 turns of peace for my war weary cities. Glens of Killybegs has so much striking now that it has pushed the completion time of the Altar back to 82 turns..

And after Corlindale's sacrifice, it's now 42 turns. Now I just need to create the Shrine of the Champion to resurrect Corlindale. It will take 5 turns to construct in Cahir Abbey. I want to get him back before the 10 turns is up so that I can cast Trust again. Otherwise, there are going to be a boatload of war declarations coming.

You can almost see the scene.

"Corlindale, all the wars are ended, except for the one with the Sheaim where not a blow has been launched. You don't have to do this!"

"No, no. I'll just lay down here and die. It is my duty."

"But really, we can handle this war. It's nothing!"

"Don't try to dissuade me, my mind is made up. Now, I'd like a nice monument, but nothing gaudy, mind you. Just a remembrance. I'll be in heaven in a half hour anyway. It's all I've ever dreamed of -- the golden halls, where great philosophical discussions scarcely dreamt by man occur each hour. The vast, green fields, and the unending sun.. The food is good, too."

"We'll make a Shrine of the Champion and resurrect you."

"Ahh, sweet rest.. Wait, what?" [Dies]

Go on to part 10.

Game diary: Fall from Heaven 2 -- the Elohim, part 8

2011-03-26T00:01:00.023-04:00

We have talked about how a story has to have conflict in order for us to really get into it. If I tried to tell you the story of my morning, it wouldn't be all that interesting. Want to see?

I got up with a dream in my head. I told it to my wife when I woke up. We realized we'd have to hurry to get her off to work and get the kids to school. Because her car needs to be fixed, we all have to take her to the train station today, and then hurry home so the boys can make the bus.

B O R I N G.

I could perhaps have enlivened it with some stylistic elements, but then any interest in the story would be because of the style, not the substance.

There was a literary movement in North America which pretty much eschewed style altogether; that's right, your all time favorites, the Puritans, who also gave us the "work ethic." Even the name of their style turns its back on fashion. They called it "plain style."

The idea that one should avoid excessive stylistic elements in writing goes pretty far back. Cicero said

When you wish to instruct, be brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind.

Ouch. With that injunction firmly entrenched in my craneous carbuncle, I will now resume those ordinary particulars under which we had previously labored..

BACK TO BUSINESS

Turn 453: Perpentach, again. You'd think he'd realize.. Well, one of his traits is Insane. So he wants another little skirmish.

He doesn't even bother to give me a pop up.

I move two Frigates down from Inishbofin. Chalid is ready in Slane.

Turn 454: Someone else built the Obsidian Gate, it appears, as I can't build it anymore. Capria is about to lose her holdings in Sheaim lands. She's only got three battered Tigers left in Grottiburg over there.

Turn 455: Here's a fine how do you do.. My citizens are so tired of war they are refusing to work in every city, causing rampant starvation.

There are some adjustments I can make to our civics that will alleviate some of this, but I hate to do it. I guess I have no choice, since people seem to LOVE to be at war with me. We adopt Nationhood and Republic for a deduction in war weariness and a happiness bonus. Let's hope it does the trick.

Turn 456: It only helped a little, but it's enough to stop the starvation everywhere but Slane. This is a new problem for me. I have never had this kind of trouble with War Weariness before. Dang, Perpentach's Frigate sank one of mine! I couldn't use Chalid's Pillar of Fire because Perp's Frigate was hiding among some neutral ships. Sneaky bastard.

Turn 459: The Sheaim have indeed recaptured Grottiburg. I use that as an excuse to end the war with them, which they are only too happy to agree to do. But Jonas and Perpentach don't feel like talking. I could use Corlindale's unique spell Peace, but if I do, I'll lose the +4 to reputation bonus that he gave us by casting Trust, because he will die when he casts Peace. And I don't have the Incense to resurrect him, nor the Reagents to create an Archmage who could cast Trust again for us. So it appears I'm stuck at war for the present.

Meanwhile, I'm building up my navy ever so slowly. The striking workers are making this pretty tough too. Noble difficulty was a cakewalk compared to this.

Turn 461: Another Great Prophet appears, who I send to Cahir Abbey to increase the production there. I spend a little cash to speed production of my two Queen of the Line ships, which will each carry five passengers (after I set their crews for speed, reducing their cargo capacity by one). I also upgraded that old Caravel to a Galleon, which can take three more. That's plenty of space for my colonists. I'll need to send some Frigates to protect them, and I'm a little short at the moment.. But I feel like time is running out. I may have to make another risky decision.

Turn 462: I made my decision. I have sent the colonists on their journey. There are 12 all told, with two Settlers and a Worker, so there are nine military units, made up of Monks, Vicars, and Longbowmen, with one Champion. I have kept one Queen of the Line in reserve in case I need to use it to smack down Perpentach. Let's hope there are no surprises on the way..

I must say, even if I do win with the Altar, I'm not going to feel like I really dominated. I've been able to hold onto what I have, but have gained little. I might have tried keeping Hexam and growing out of the money trouble. Had I kept Hexam, I'd have been able to keep Coombe View also, since they are close enough together. And that would have kept Coombe View out of Perpentach's hands. But I chose to play it safe with those decisions. Now I'm risking quite a bit with my colony ships. I have to hope that they have a peaceful voyage. I can't afford to lose any of them. There are passengers on every one, even the Frigates. With the workers striking now, it would take me forever to build this small fleet back up again. It's possible that I couldn't even do it. I need peace, which Corlindale can give me, but I don't want to risk that until I know I can replace him or resurrect him.

It's going to be a long eight turns watching those ships sail off into the unknown. Even if they make it, how will Decius treat them? He's softened his tone toward me somewhat. And what do things look like over there now? I know where the Incense is, but have barbarians seized it? I didn't really send enough force to be sure to take a barbarian city. I'm blind there, so I don't know what awaits. And I failed to make the Nexus before the Lanun, the Pirate civ, did. So I will have to build gates in every city before I can send troops back and forth the easy way. There's no way I can reinforce the new settlements if things get dicey, what with an 8 turn gap between there and home.

In other words, the story is getting good.

Turn 463: Seeing all of Flauros' Privateers made me feel jumpy, so I've changed my mind again. I stopped the convoy for one turn to transfer the troops inside the Frigates to the remaining Queen of the Line.

This allows me to add one more Monk to the mix, too. I'm sure Perpentach will need watching, but I really need to take the colony seriously, so I'm putting everything I can into it.

Turn 464: We have researched the tech Blasting Powder.

Let's hope either I or Capria have some. I do!

Now heading for Omniscience, which allows me to build the final piece of the Altar of the Luonnotar. We'll have it in 14 turns.

Turn 466: We have our first Mage unit, having just upgraded from Adept this turn. Look at her, all shiny.

I have chosen Poison Blades as her second rank spell. She can also have Water Walking. Poison Blades can give everyone in her stack a +1 bonus to their attack and defense value. And it leads to the third rank spell Vitalize, which we'll need at our colony, though I have some doubts as to whether she can get up there in time to help much in that way. If I don't create an independent colony there, it will drag my economy into the toilet, and I don't know how long I can support that. But we'll see.

Turn 468: We are now constructing our first Man O' War in Cahir Abbey and our first Arquebus in Garryvoe, both units that require Blasting Powder. Look out, Perpentach..

I'll finally be able to put a decent navy in the water.

Turn 469: I spent some cash to upgrade two of my Frigates to Man O' Wars, (or should that be Men O' War?). Perpentach keeps sending a Frigate up to try to mess with my fishing boats every other turn. Heh. All for naught.

Neither Perpentach nor Jonas Endain want to talk about peace. It appears they are in it for the long haul now..

Meanwhile, my people are getting pretty sick and tired of war.

Turn 470: Our ships are finally out in the open water of the inland sea. I think this means that we have escaped any possible trouble from a sudden war declaration, except from Flauros. She could always change her religion and return to her evil ways.

But look at the list of leaders -- all the evil folk are lined up at the bottom. It doesn't pay to be evil in this world. I think this depends somewhat on the player. Had I played an evil civ and gone to war with my good neighbors, good might not be faring so well. But the main factor, I think, is that good civs don't attack one another as much, and so they all prosper.

Turn 472: We are two turns from landing our colonists.

We have made it without any problems. We shouldn't have to fear Flauros' two Privateers there because they are weaker than our escorting Frigates, so even if she suddenly goes crazy and declares war, we should be able to land our colonists. Then they have a short walk to the area I have chosen for them to set up their first city. It looks like the plan is going to work out OK.

Turn 473: Good Lord.. There was a barbarian Lion unit at our landing spot, and he killed a Vicar before he was himself dispatched. That is a heavy loss. The ships have been turned back to Cahir Abbey, so the colonists are on their own.

As you can see from this picture

the spot I had chosen is already taken by a barbarian city. Our luck stinks! There are two other possible spots I've seen that we could try to colonize and be near Incense right away, but many problems with them. One is right next to the Hippus, and we can't settle there without a huge defending army. The other is next to the Kazad, who don't like us very much and wouldn't let us pass through their territory to get to it without some diplomatic maneuvering. We are fairly well stuck with trying to settle somewhere here. Maybe on the other side of Malakim territory there is another good location? I'd hate to wander for years in the desert..

Perhaps my only recourse is to take that barbarian city. Had I known it was there, I could have sent two extra soldiers instead of the colonists.

I suppose another option is to simply settle right here? It's a bad place because there is no fresh water nearby. The river just to the north supports a city much better, with Flood Plains and just plain old Plains. Decisions.. I think I have to take this spot and build up for an invasion of the barbarian cities later. Bummer.

Turn 474: Warrenpoint has been founded.

The worker will get cracking on the Reagents we see just south, and then build up the surrounding area as much as possible. Being surrounded by barbarians is actually not so bad, as it ought to keep the Malakim from pestering us, should they decide they'd like to. Of course, the barbarians themselves might come for a visit. But we should be able to handle that.

Turn 475: Wouldn't you know it.

Perpentach is hiding with Flauros' Privateers again. So I can't sock him with a Pillar of Fire. What a jackass! But I can ask him for peace this turn, so I will, right after I sink his stupid little ship.

He's willing to give me his city again. Once again, I'm going to give it right back to him for the reputation bonus. Because I STILL want to convert his evil butt.

Wow, this one was worth +2, so that now he is cautious toward me.. Hmm, this might be just the moment we've been waiting for..

Yes! He has converted, asking only for Astronomy to do it. He is now neutral. But he won't open his borders to us because he says we are his worst enemy. I've given him Orders from Heaven, which ought to get The Order started in one of his cities. If I can get him to convert to that, he'll turn good. And my work will be done.

So this turn shows us well on our way to many of our objectives. Perpentach is slowly turning toward good because of our influence. We have finally achieved peace with everyone. We have our colony beginning to grow far to the west. Things are looking up!

The only downer is that we won't get the Incense as soon as I wanted, but I feel sure we'll get it.

Turn 478: We have researched Omniscience, which not only gives us access to the seventh and final piece of the Altar of Luonnotar, but also allows us to see the entire map. Which is cool.

Look at all the barbarians wandering around in the desert.

The city of Ocells is lightly defended, but I might lose a unit or two if I tried to take it right now. With Ogres out in the desert, I don't think this would be wise, because it would leave my cities under defended. So we'll just wait a bit. Maybe the Ogres will be attracted over here where I can whomp them.

We can see all this because I built a Hawk recon unit in Glens of Killybegs and then moved it here to Warrenpoint. It's a very cheap unit, and very useful in this kind of situation.

As the AI takes its turn, Os-Gabella declares war on us.. Fer cryin' out loud people!

Turn 483: The Ogre is eyeballing our new city.

Meanwhile, we have Reagents now, so I'm going to try to upgrade to some Archmages. I may not have a qualifying Mage yet. And, I don't. The price I pay for delaying Knowledge of the Ether for so long. Mages aren't crucial for my civ, but they are very useful. Especially in this case, where I want to Vitalize the land around Warrenpoint so that it can grow faster. I really need the Incense, because I already have three Vicars that qualify to become Luriduses.

Turn 484: The ships have returned. I'm going to upgrade the Frigates to Man O' Wars, which will take a couple of turns, then fill up the Queen of the Lines and send them back to the colonies. I'm also building Obsidian Gates in my cities. It's important now to support the colonies at this point.

Speaking of the colonies, the Ogre took his chances, and our Champion beat him fair and square.

Turn 488: Yuck, Flauros cast River of Blood again. That means she built the Birthright Regained project. It gave her access to her World Spell a second time.

Sometimes I do things without really thinking them through. I just loaded the ships up again and sent them off. But I've got Obsidian Gates coming on line now. I could have gotten everyone I wanted over there a few turns faster by sending them through the gates. Duh!

Turn 493: Our troubles with Perpentach may be at an end. He agreed to become a Vassal State of Falamar, the pirate civ leader. We almost had an "OH SHIIIII.." moment when Decius threw off the rule of Flauros. Remember, he's evil and she has become good (though I don't know how you can be good and cast River of Blood..) It could have endangered our colonies. But he immediately agreed to become a Vassal State of Falamar too. So all's well that ends well.

Turn 497: We finished the Obsidian Gate early in Warrenpoint by trading Engineering to some civs that didn't have it for whatever cash they had on hand. Now we are building a Lighthouse. The resupply ships are arriving, so we soon will be able to take that barbarian city to the north which sits on our original settlement site. This will give us access to that Incense, finally.

I do feel guilty sometimes taking things from the barbarians. After all, "barbarian" is just what you call the other guys. It's not a proper signifier, has no independent meaning (and don't take me all down the slippery slopes of Deconstruction, you know what I mean!) We look like barbarian invaders to them, right? But this is a game and all they'll do is attack me over and over again. The game uses them as a stumbling block, but not a true adversary. They won't even use the resources they control. Silly barbarians.

Turn 498: I have discovered something I didn't know before, having had no opportunity to consider it -- my Mage's spell Spring, the first rank Water Mana spell, turns a Desert tile into a Plains tile. So I can begin to 'vitalize' the desert already. That's a good thing. It is barren over there.

I have sent six units toward the barbarian city of Ocells. This includes two Paladins and four Monks. That ought to do the trick.

Turn 499: Unfortunately, because of the harsh desert, Ocells was too small for us to capture. We just wound up destroying it. Grr. I didn't remember that little detail. Now I need a Vicar with Life 1 to come over to Sanctify it. Then I can build my own city here, just as I planned.

But we did get the Incense we wanted. Now we just need to hook it up.

In political news, Cardith Lorda and Arendel Phaedra are at war now. It probably has to do with their vassals. But here is a fine example of two good civs at each other's throats. 'Tis a pity.

Turn 501: The list of largest civs is out.

I am totally not on that list. But Capria is.

Go on to part 9.

The future in his hands..

2011-03-25T08:26:00.003-04:00

From a Daily Mail article:

A 12-year-old child prodigy has astounded university professors after grappling with some of the most advanced concepts in mathematics.

Jacob Barnett has an IQ of 170 - higher than Albert Einstein - and is now so far advanced in his Indiana university studies that professors are lining him up for a PHD research role.

The boy wonder, who taught himself calculus, algebra, geometry and trigonometry in a week, is now tutoring fellow college classmates after hours.

The prodigy at work.

So what does he want to work on? His own version of Einstein's theory of relativity. You know, just for fun. His mom, not sure whether he was on to something or just a very imaginitive boy, sent a video of what he was doing to an expert at Princeton, astrophysics professor Scott Tremaine. He wrote back:

I'm impressed by his interest in physics and the amount that he has learned so far.

The theory that he's working on involves several of the toughest problems in astrophysics and theoretical physics.

Anyone who solves these will be in line for a Nobel Prize.

When I was twelve, all I wanted to do was lay on the floor and watch Scooby Doo..

There's a video at the end of the article which shows him explaining some complicated math techniques.

dreams and phase transitions

Dream - The wild bus ride; the invasion

Recent dreams point to something big?

If you are going to be hard headed about it

This blog sucks!

Behind the music

Song Stories -- the "Cars" trio

Song Stories -- Suburban Tragedy

Song stories -- Solar System Man

Song stories

40 songs

Forgotten Song

Form is a farm

The new dust bowl?

The echo of the past

Dream -- Godzillas marching

The new distributed creativity..

An early dream

Would advanced intelligence even be material?

Dream -- Sometimes they stand there right in front of you

Announcing War of Staves and call for illustrator

A recent dream -- wake up!

Writing about traumatic events can help to heal

You can learn a lot from little words

LIWC Results

Analysis of tweets from jref(1815 most recent words - 30th September, 2011)

Emotional Style

Social Style

Thinking Style

Analysis of tweets from katyperry(228 most recent words - 30th September, 2011)

Emotional Style

Social Style

Thinking Style

Tally of modern misery

Changing times c150 years ago to today

Biorobotics and the cryptoterrestrials

Billions of years

Penny for your thoughts?

Faster than light particles found

A lesson in critical thinking

Moons of Saturn from Casini

Floodageddon..

Roswell debris goes missing in the mail and Socially Constructed Ignorance

Heal the body with the mind

Gravity not an emergent force

Somehow the power is still on..

Dream -- telling the future

That sleeping bigfoot pic..

Earthquake on Tuesday, Hurricane on Saturday -- what did I do?

Roswell debris not of this earth

Dream interpretation test

More dreams that are probably manipulating you too

Dream - the exploding rocket, and the fat managers who don't care

Didn't we just do this?

Computers that don't need electronics

"BUT ALL WILL BE WELL, AND EVERY KIND OF THING WILL BE WELL."

Arizona on fire, Missouri river jumps levees

Of course, it's not just in the US either -- "Global Weirding"

If you didn't want to believe me..

Disasters the new normal?

Holy heatwave, Batman..

The Hidden Reality: Multiple universes and parallel worlds

Down the garden path

Knock on wood

Stages of paranormal belief, part 2

The Stages of Paranormal Belief

Just when I thought I was out.. they pull me back in!

Blogsquatcher on StanCourtney.com

UFO message shows people don't read..

Blogging, like crime, does not pay..

If you liked Fall from Heaven 2..

The Sims and simulated reality

Game diary: Fall from Heaven 2 -- the Elohim, part 10

Book recommendations and a few thoughts

Game diary: Fall from Heaven 2 -- the Elohim, part 9

Game diary: Fall from Heaven 2 -- the Elohim, part 8

The future in his hands..

Analysis of tweets from jref
(1815 most recent words - 30th September, 2011)

Analysis of tweets from katyperry
(228 most recent words - 30th September, 2011)