i am the stillness that moves
i am the silence that screams
i am the shadow that glows
and the waking that dreams
i am the death that lives
the grudge that forgives
i am the ice that burns
and the emptiness that yearns
How often do we hear this phrase? It gets bantered about all the time, particularly here in the USA - "...land of the free...". It has become increasingly more prevalent in the wake of 9/11, after that long lovely lull following the end of the "Cold War". People talk about it like it's this grand noble thing. You hear phrases like "the blood of young soldiers" or "the courage of the American people". Well, I'm about to call bullshit on all that, and it's going to hurt. I know it will hurt because it hurt me to learn the truth of it. I might as well illustrate with the recent events in my personal life. Please bear with me, because it'
an end and a new beginning...
the past month has been filled with
ponderings on the turning of the wheel.
February is that time for me, a time of
beginnings and endings, birth and death -
the wheel turns, and spring comes.
Skadhi recedes and Freyja approaches.
i sit in stillness, awaiting, wondering
what this time, this revolution, will bring.
what will rise from the ashes?
what is waiting to be born?
cycles upon cycles, wheels within wheels.
the planets in their orbits, the moon
brings the tides, wave after wave.
i sit on that shore letting the waves
of history wash over me. events
of all sorts set up synchronic resonances,
words were not enough
and never were
what i felt with you
for you, only you
has not faded
shining still
a star, a flower
in your name
forever blossoming
love letters, each image
born of the heart
channeled in the mind
for you
your light, that incandescence
of unspeakable beauty
given form
and reflected back to you
words are not enough
and never shall they be
She blinded me with science...
or, "Why you should take every 'scientific fact' with a shaker of salt".
Section I: The Secret Life of a Scientist
I will merely mention the observer effect here, for completeness sake. I don't want to discuss it at length, since it's mechanism is elusive and ultimately calls into question the very nature of scientific inquiry. Suffice to say it's there, it's working, and it's not going away anytime soon.
Theoretical Bias: Most scientists (those doing interesting things, anyways) work within a theoretical framework. The framework is important because it determines the types of questions (hypothese
wear long sleeves
wear long sleeves
don't roll'em up
don't let them see
what it is
that i've done to me
they wouldn't understand
they never understand
this is my land
tilled by my hand
i can't control the weather
can't control the pressure
building up inside
that just wants to make me hide
disappear
and there's nothing to fear
but i can't stop the rain
can't stop the pain
no drug will every make it go away
not today, not tomorrow
all that ails me will never go away
it's here to stay
so i take up the knife
take control of my life
let the dull blade rake my skin
it's teeth tear through it
again and again
this is mine
i had slipped in my fear
of nothing left to offer you
and spilled my paints
toppling an empty canvas
my chest is a mudslide
my face a burnt rose
my hands dripping
honey wine
could you love me thus? still?
hopelessly smeared
with the pigments of our past
caked in sorrows
that long ago should have
washed down a
shower drain
A Matrix View of Space-Time by skulkey, literature
Literature
A Matrix View of Space-Time
A Matrix View of Space-Time
What if the universe is an nth-dimensional hyperspacial matrix?
Background - Neural Networks
Back in grad-school, my lab took a semester to discuss neural-network models of learning and memory, of the sort that cognitive neuroscientists and artificial intelligence researchers have been developing in hopes of simulating the activities of the human brain/mind. Some of these models utilize a matrix involving nth-dimensional hyperspace (where n is a variable indicating the number of dimensions represented by the matrix). Such models are hideously complex, but that complexity is attractive when
chainlink mind
smothered sky
poles and wires
insects running tracks
with multicolored carapices
cockpit windows
smeared in salt
chainlink eyes
sullen trees
plastic feces
poison air
cockpit mind
turning inward
turning old
chainlink sky
smothered poison
insects stringing wires
shedding plastic
salt smeared trees
fenced in
sullen sky
brooding mind
insects glowing glaring eyes
smear the salty air
revealing chainlink trees
dreaming chaninlink dreams...
A stranger in my room. Unsettling. Annoying. I clench my teeth.
Unfortunate that my room is the only access point to the furnace and hot water
heater. The sensor on the heater blew again. Apparently it does every damn
time the power goes out. At least it's not near freezing in my room today.
But I keep getting cold drafts every time the guy leaves the room to go
outside and get some part or tool.
I tried smoking him out, one ciggie after another. No effect. He's been
futzing about with the damn thing for an hour now. I don't want to leave. I
can't - not with this stranger in my space.
But inevitably the demands of th