Sunday, 6 February 2011

Cult Buddhism?


Interesting photojournalism article in Foreign Policy on Wat Dhammakaya in Thailand. Worth a look for the extraordinary photography.

Open Source DNA (LSD & Francis Crick)



I had no idea how Byzantine and Machiavellian the plot for discovery of the double helix structure of DNA was. This is a must see. Regrettably for spoon-fed Nanny United States TV documentaries, the crucial 'visionary' moment of Francis Crick's use of LSD, where the structure revealed itself to him (built on Rosalind Franklin's shared contribution) is not mentioned. The important fact can only be alluded to at the end where Crick talks briefly about the mysteries of space and time, though it's well know he devoted the rest of his career to dreams.



What would make the story really incredible would be if anybody confirmed that it was Linus Pauling's son who gave them the LSD while working with Watson and Crick even though his twice awarded Nobel prize winning father was flat out competing with them on the other side of the Atlantic. That would be symmetry to the narrative that would make Rosalind's reluctant partner Maurice Wilkins at Kings College the rightful father of open source scientific discovery as it was he who believwed most in sharing information.

Just look at Linus' son in this documentary and ask yourself. Is this the kind of West Coast rebellious son of a Chemist, who in the late 50's could have dropped acid, and might have introduced it to the Cambridge genius of Crick thereby unwittingly working against his father who put him there in the first place? * Ahem. 

*(Pure speculation on my part)

Update: The original video was removed so a "related" video has been posted instead.

Fail Whale


Via failwhale

Is This A Meme?


Answers over at ....

Marko Rodin - Vortex Mathmatics (Toroidal Power)


I thought about this for two days before posting it. I was just looking for a logical explanation why sacred geometry seems to be so compelling. I'm a person who takes an interest in Mandelbrot Sets and those Mandalas I was referring to earlier; Marko Rodin explained in the first few minutes of this four hour presentation. A lot of you might feel uncomfortable with the anti materialist science rhetoric which if that's the case then just stick to the math, that he confidently delivers upon. 

However for a discovery that he refuses to commercialise and wishes to be an open source gift for sustainable energy development I think that anti materialist science stance is an act of nobility and truth. Give it a couple of minutes if you can. What I could understand the first time round watching this blew my temporal lobe


Saturday, 5 February 2011

Zeitgeist



Zeitgeist was much more useful for me the second time round than the first. It compelled me to drill down into topics I don't really have enough time for till cloning is on the table but the result of that work was happily fruitful and in some ways releases some spare tick over capacity I'd probably cordoned off subconsciously when asking that really boring question. Who am I?

I still ask of course but some of the chronology has been taken off my shoulders.



I learned that the producer of Zeitgeist relented to the inquisition for his full name and gave the interview above. He's got two things going for him. He's young and he's rapaciously clever. I only know that because I was getting hammered and laid in bars at his age. I'm a late bloomer. He works in advertising sometimes so I thought that was interesting. 

His name is Peter.

Sean Dorrance Kelly & The Sacred

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Sean Dorrance Kelly
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Sean is a philosphy professor at Harvard. He's cut from fresher cloth than the usual backwash though his sporting analogies are distinctly U.S thematic and about to be as evolutionarily crucial as the appendix. That doesn't mean they don't matter. It just means it doesn't count. Still worth viewing for asking a great question.