something large, something small, and something else

Something rather large and mind boggling:


via (deepastronomy.com)

Something rather small and mind boggling:

A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics

"Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality..."

"...The amplituhedron looks like an intricate, multifaceted jewel in higher dimensions. Encoded in its volume are the most basic features of reality that can be calculated, “scattering amplitudes,” which represent the likelihood that a certain set of particles will turn into certain other particles upon colliding. These numbers are what particle physicists calculate and test to high precision at particle accelerators like the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland."

Read more.

 Which kind of made me think of Inra's net. 

"Francis Harold Cook describes the metaphor of Indra's net from the perspective of the Huayan school in the book Hua-Yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra:
Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering "like" stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring." (via wikipedia).

Can't Get Enough Ed Abbey

Ed Abbey is rapidly becoming my favorite philosopher.  These two clips are taken from Jack Loeffler's interview of Abbey in 1983, when he had become the old man, to which he refers in the first clip.  One would think that having dabbled in Environmental Studies at UVM, I would have been able to recite Abbey chapter and verse, but the truth is I am just now coming to him in my sedate middle age, so that perhaps when I'm in the final stages I'll have something to teach (ed. watch the video...he's rambling again).

Some of my favorite spots when he theorizes that no one is worthy of eternal life and that the desire for immortality comes from having lived a lifeless life.  I also like that he likes the world just as it is, that it is just a roiling human comedy full of strife and conflict, but that is what makes it so great...and when you're gone you're gone and that there's no use getting all sentimental about it.  Finally, I like that he says that we as humans have as much of a right to life as any other life, but that we don't have the right to exploit that right, and that we should have reverence for life in all of its forms.

Annotations:

1. Shakespeare's "The Seven Ages of Man" the famous poem that begins with "All the world's a stage..."
2. A somnambulist's favorite, Joyce's "Ulysses" "History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake"

91 Centimeters

This is a short animated film that I watched this morning.  At first my thoughts about what the movie meant ran towards whether or not the individual is the center of his or her own universe; that is, did the meteorite knock the man, Henry, out of his world by 91 centimeters or did it knock the world 91 centimeters away from him.  Of course, when I contemplated the role of the psychologist/psychiatrist in the overall narrative, I began to see the movie as a parable for some sort of sudden onset mental illness that Henry is dealing with all alone; thus the relative or I guess absolute indifference of everyone around him.

What do you think?   

An Antechamber of Paradise

Something to ponder

The most interesting thing to me ... was the anecdote related by [Simon] Leys ... about sitting in an Australian café minding his own business while a radio is blaring musical and spoken pap in the background. By chance, the program switched to a Mozart clarinet quartet, for a moment turning the café "into an antechamber of Paradise." People fell silent, there were looks of bafflement, and then, "the the huge relief of all," one customer "stood up, walked straight to the radio," turned the knob to another station, and "restored at once the more congenial noises, which everyone again could comfortably ignore."

Leys describes this event as kind of an epiphany. He is sure that philistinism does not result from the lack of knowledge. The customer who could not abide hearing Mozart's music recognized its beauty. Indeed, he did precisely what he did for that reason. The desire to destroy beauty, according to Leys, applies not just to aesthetics but as much, if not more, to ethics: "The need to bring down to our level, to deface, to deride and debunk any splendor that is towering above us, is probably the saddest urge of human nature."

Ian Buruma, "The Man Who Got It Right." The New York Review of Books, 8/15/2013


Not sure if this is THE quartet mentioned, but it is A Mozart quartet. 

50 Common Misconceptions