17011 Youtube Videos

I've watched 17011 Youtube videos. Is that average? The figure is in your account overview.

Time Anxiety

An excellent interview in which Terence explains some of the characteristics of time that some of you may find helpful as we experience the acceleration of its qualities. There's discussion of Terence's controversial and 'logos' inspired use of the I Ching in here thought I find the cross parallels between Terence's Timewave Zero and Clif High's Webbot absolutely gripping.

279 Shopping Days To Christmas

Earlier for the second or third time I tried to explain over the phone why the distinctive leitmotifs of time are changing. Why the linear model is increasingly looking like a fractally recursive and more chronologically compressed model of time than the one that existed say 30 years ago. Three people have just written what I've attempted to say in the last couple of hours and appeared in my feed almost sequentially so it seems right to share them right here and right now:

1. We Must Know
2. Neil Perkin
3. John Smallman

If you're feeling time starved and looking for inspiration then those three posts are a good start. Remember. You can't save time. Only spend it.

Tick Tock Tick Tock

I've been blogging a bit about John Titor since I discovered his story last week, because it punched a hole through my space time continuum and buggered up the rough narrative I've been piecemeal assembling in answer to the question 'who am I?'.

Then I did a bit more research. I thought I'd throw it out there to avoid surprises if the story ever fleshed out a bit and erm...it has. Titor claimed that the time travel mission he was doing emerged from 2036 where super collider physics using counter rotating black holes, had initiated the development of early time machines. It's all very complicated without blagging a bit of M Theory, but for the geeks out there, the Grandfather Paradox isn't a problem and can be accommodated. In fact all paradoxes can be accommodated in a multi dimensional universe which is a bit of a scary thought until the unlimited possibilities are considered. The good ones that is.

Right on schedule the lab monkeys at CERN, who are tinkering with this stuff have published an early paper on time travel using similar maths theory behind twin counter rotating black hole gizmos for time-travel field-creation are surfacing, and so now we're creeping up to the edge of the rabbit hole. An interesting comment that John Titor mentions from 2036 is that a lot of people couldn't deal with the idea then either, and preferred to live as if it didn't quite exist. Which ironically suggests that only people who believe in it will ever notice or be effected by it. Which is not that far from that God thing right? 

So here's the link if you wish to go read about it from the 'Source'. I for one wont be telling the scientists where the time machine schematics that Titor posted are because the U.S. civil war thing he averted didn't happen (but is that a good thing?) and I don't think we should dick around with Time when we're too stupid a monkey to magic away the nuclear power we're dependant on. Which we can do if the rumours are true. Time will tell.

John if on some slim chance you're still around, I have a bunch of philosophical questions for you and I'm not really interested in predictions. Worth a try.

John Titor - Time Traveller On The Net Forums?

This threw a huge spanner in the works for me. I hadn't heard of John Titor until a few hours ago but my own private unified theory was doing very nicely for the next few years even though the Multiverse theory that science is increasingly strident about has been a good house guest when factoring in transdimensional disruptions. That has all changed on first hearing of the interview below. I really need to go back and do the legwork on what John Titor actually said as so far I've just listened to two interviews of authors who have written books about him. 

I could kick myself that I haven't rigorously factored in dimensional (time) travel given that the notion of time as exception to the Omniverse rule rolls off my lips quite frequently and that I'm comfortable with trans-dimensional intervention both conceptually and pragmatically. It just never occurred to me that a 21st century human would be the first credible encounter of the physics that the adolescents of exploding science at CERN are dicking around with.  

Until I reconcile this anomaly with all the other stuff that I've only scratched the surface of (and there's a slim chance John Titor is THE most creative idea media-seed I've ever seen planted), I'm in that somewhat uncomfortable zone of holding powerfully conflicting ideas in my head at the same time. It's spinning me out, but there are glimpses of potential for idea reconciliation, though at this stage the sheer renegade lone ranger factor is baffling me. Just the one off? How come? How so? Whatever the outcome I like this character a lot already. Like me he despises the excesses of consumer materialism that is the myopic hallmark of the morally diminished classes. The superficial materialists. The ones wittingly unaware(sic) that the clock's ticking.

Update: The more I watch the U.S. citizens apathy on constitutional changes to their rights over the National Defence Emergency Act, the more it looks like John Titor changed the dates from 2012 to 2008 to add some urgency to his message. Fascinating.

Time Theory Part II

80's Music from Marcus Brown on Vimeo.

This is kind of weird but when I mentioned to Marcus that I really liked what he said, I got an email pointing towards this video he made about it when he was going through his rubber gloves period. It's a fun way of reducing my self indulgently long and pseudo intellectual post about drugs and quantum physics. Marcus has a nice little body of social media work if you go into his video channel over here.

We also grew up about 200 metres away from each other in Southampton, hung out in the same parks yet never knew each other. Which is a good thing because I would have probably not appreciated him so much and I know my record of keeping contact with people from my youth is not strong. This is the quid pro quo of an international jet set gypsy lifestyle. There's always a quid pro quo.

Ontological Interpretations of Quantum Theory & Damn Fine Drugs

When I was younger I collected the entire encyclopaedic weekly publication of The Unexplained. My father must still have it I guess. I disappointed myself by failing to buy one or two issues out of hundreds so it's technically incomplete but actually it's a good primer on much of the unexplained which gripped me as a lad. 

It was all there. UFO's, spontaneous combustion and the like. I was a bit obsessed by it but then completely dropped interest until I think about 5 years ago when I started to question the veracity of 911 and then once again I was lurking about on some very unpolished websites where in one memorable instance I realised the content was so well researched but looked shabby so I emailed the author to beg him to stop using Times New Roman and to justify his columns as I do on my posts. You can take the boy out of advertising but you can't etc etc. 

Incidentally that site is now an' alt news-source' bible but I don't to want link to it because I think the onus is on all of us to not judge a book by it's cover but to assess information by it's internal logic, and qualitative dimensions such as credence, syntax and tone, not to mention supporting evidence and most importantly open receptive minds. That's a journey each must make for themselves. A resistance to heat is needed too. Fingers get burned all the time.

I'm not sure if that specific surfing pattern led to Doug Rushkoff but I definitely was introduced through his podcasts to Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson where I pretty much inhaled what I thought were all McKenna's available speeches online.

From there I learned a lot about entheogens, and ethnobotany of shamanism and all the other stuff that is pretty much thousands of years of history that contemporary living doesn't like to have a grown up conversation about. I think it was Timothy Leary who said "LSD is a molecule that causes insanity in people who haven't tried it". This is actually the case. People with no experience have virulent views. But let me tell you it's not the same as saying just because I've not been to Iraq doesn't mean I don't know what it's like. I'll elaborate more on that in a later post.

My own use of LSD when I was 18 or so, and later on when I was doing my degree were quite remarkable in so much as I had authentic revelations of a lucid nature about me myself and I. In my mind it seemed as revealing as modern therapy over extended sessions though I've never actually done that but listened to people who have. I'm not talking about flippant issues or fuzzy new age camp fire singing topics. 

No, I'm talking about the raw stuff of life. Sexuality, ego, morality and virtue etc. This isn't an attempt to suggest some sort of intellectual closure or elevated superiority. On the contrary I did too little and insufficiently strong enough doses to squeeze my way through the basics. I use that word 'squeeze' because the single most misunderstood point about effective-dose hallucinogenic experiences is that they are not necessarily fun. They can be extraordinarily hard work but there's gold at the end of them. They are most often powerful, boundary-dissolving ego-stripping processes.

I know a lot more now since reading up and listening on the subject of entheogens, DMT, Ayahuasca and Psyclocybin which living close to the New Forest in my youth, I've also had the blessing of trying. The latter is particularly satisfying in nature. The splendour of the complexity is profound and actually between you, I and the internet I'd eaten a dose Psilocybin when I did a bit of creative planning and got this tattoo on my chest. I don't recommend tattoos under hallucinogens. I can't imagine you would but if you really need to I have something to share that might help. But it's too private for here.

So getting back on track (as I obviously wanted to get that out of the way). I've been fascinated with Terence McKenna's experience of a transdimensional voice that shared something with him, under I think the effects of Psilocybin or DMT. (Very different durations those two. One is 3 to 5 hours. The latter 5 minutes or so.) I've been fixated on this voice not because it's necessarily real but because what it said is so compelling, so disruptive. The Logos said to him:  'What you call human we call time'. 

If we cut some big bang slack here i.e Pretend like Big Bang that it's so big and so bang that whatever the rationale it's a voice from somewhere else as opposed to borderline insanity; this actually makes a lot more sense if one were to consider the ontological interpretations of quantum theory. i.e The notion of for example trying to imagine a message being conveyed between say the 8th and 3rd dimension. It's simply not possible while shackled to three dimensions and a fourth of linear time.

OK that's a bit hard to convey without dipping in to string theory so I'll try and explain using dream analogy. Ever noticed that time is on a different level in dreams. It's not like that whole narrative you managed to remember takes place in a time anything like the way it does in a waking state. Some suggest it all happens at once. Or parts of it do. 

Think about that. 

It's part of the reason dreams so often frustratingly dissolve by the time we've hit the restroom in ten or 15 steps for our morning ablutions on awakening. It's frustrating but it explains why so much is lost or not even remembered in the first place. How can we lose that which we never recalled? The transfer doesn't compute into sentient space time. I'm sorry it doesn't. I don't make the rules...it just doesn't.

I've written another post about this sitting in drafts trying to explain what I've learned so far on this so I should finish that little fella off first, before going on and on here but I just wanted to finally share a story here because this post is about time.

I ask lots of people the same question about time. There's a reasonably consistent linear relativism argument which is always nice to hear articulated, because it's a conclusion I've reached too, in the past. It's quite exciting to hear a prior self-determined logic conclude by forcing it's way out from another person's voice as if proof that quite complex hypothesis can emerge from separate sources. A bit like magic.

 Some people call it 'great minds think alike'. I say great minds thinking alike is randomly meeting down the pub or something. This other stuff is more 'Have you ever thought that wearing sneakers inside super size Wellies keeps your feet dry and keeps a spare pair of footwear to chill out in the Saloon  without carrying anything seperately? Only to look down and see you've both done exactly that. OK that's a terrible analogy but if you have a better one I'll use it. Promise.

I digress. Let's wrap up. 

The thing is, I asked my friend Marcus Brown my usual question about time and he said something I've never heard before. You know, I don't really want to share it, but if you like ask him yourself for a robust explanation that time apparently really is speeding up outside of the oft concluded explanation I've just written about. 

I like Marcus explanation: It's allegedly stupid, but empirically bright. 

If that doesn't wet you're appetite to watch the video above then I've no idea what you're doing down here anyway and I've clearly just wasted too much of your rapidly diminishing time.

Sunsets & Time

I thought I'd be clever and weave this post into something lengthy about time and running out but I think the pictures speak for themselves. The sunsets on Huntington Beach are astonishingly beautiful but the day care centre where the old folks are marking out their final days is somewhat different. No less interesting though.

The first image of the post belongs to a staff member's wrist at American Apparel which is a brand I've really fallen for. Who couldn't? Clean and fresh image, simple but noticably hip garments, and all priced very fairly with proper brand values including a positon on immigration that puts both the Democratic and Republican parties to shame (though perversely not George Bush pre 911). I've talked (at length) before about why I think brands in a product parity world can differentiate through having a position that sits outside the quarterly report. One that preferably upsets a few people too.

These are the sort of brand values which are the difference between those that stand for something and those that would like to stand for something but fail to have anything to stand for because that's what pretesting and focus groups do don't they?

Anway I've been thinking about time for quite a while and I think it's a long post in the brewing. It's got nothing to do with planning and yet everything to do with planning of course.

This last image is taken from the Nokia N95 and while not perfect is every reason why I'll miss having a 5 megapixel cameraphone once I buy an iPhone. Unless of course Apple dish up one in the future.