2010 « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Current Affairs ... Personal Reflections ...

Something or other got me thinking today about Yes – the art-rock band that had its fame and glory in the early 1970s (Yes is still around in one incarnation or another, playing at state fairs and local art centers). I was specifically thinking about the opening routine Yes used in concert back in the early 70s, which was captured perfectly on their first live album, Yessongs. I was hearing it all in my head this morning, and remembering the time or two that I myself experienced a Yes show back in my youth.

Ah yes, Madison Square Garden in New York. The opening act started at 8, but was mostly just a distraction. They got off stage around a quarter to nine, and everyone in the seats got restless. Then just before 9, the lights went out, the arena went dark – and you could feel electricity pulsing thru the crowd. You could see hundreds of yellow light spots amidst the crowd – young people toking up. And then, very quietly at first, you heard the opening notes of the lead-in theme song. That was a recording of the finale to Stravinsky’s Theme From Firebird Suite.

The Firebird went on, resonating in the darkness for another 2 or 3 minutes, growing in volume and intensity. On the dark stage, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:27 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, October 24, 2010

◊ M is for ‘Maps’; G is for more than ‘Grand’

Science ... Spirituality ...

I just read a short but important essay by Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow in Scientific American, all about string theory and reality. The authors say that because string theory requires 5 or more different sub-systems in order to comprehensively cover the nature of reality, there really is NO UNCHANGING, BEDROCK OF REALITY in our Universe.

They use the analogy of a map to explain this. There is an inherent contradiction involved in drawing topological maps on flat paper with limited borders, given that the underlying reality is a spherical planet (Earth) that has no topological borders. Standard maps do a pretty good job of giving the viewer an idea of the shape of the terrain and the relative distances between cities, rivers, road and other landmarks, within a 100 to 1,000 mile zone. But if a map gets too big, distortions set in due to the curvature of the earth. Mapmakers have all kinds of tricks to deal with those distortions, but not without trade-offs; i.e., correcting for one thing (relative distances between cities, say) introduces other problems (the overall shape of coastlines and national boundaries, along with continents and oceans, get warped).

So, if you need to use maps to guide you over a long, long distance (e.g., New York to New Delhi), you best use a series of maps. Each map is pretty-good for a few hundred miles, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:19 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, October 21, 2010

◊ Good Luck, NASA

Outer Space ...

I caught up recently with NASA’s latest big thing, the James Webb Space Telescope. There’s a good article about it in the October Scientific American. In a way it replaces the Hubble, and in a way it’s different. The Webb is built to observe a broad range of infrared light coming from distant reaches of the universe, whereas Hubble focused on the visible spectrum, with a bit of range into the ultraviolet and infrared zones.

Also, the Webb is more of a “deep space” mission; whereas the Hubble orbited at around 380 miles from Earth, the Webb will find its way to a “gravity point” about a million miles from Earth, on the far side away from the Sun (towards Mars). It is a good bit more sensitive than the Hubble, partly for being bigger, and partly for being so far away from Earth (which radiates a lot of energy and fuzzes up the really faint signals from space). It won’t deliver those fantastic pictures as Hubble did, but it will return a lot of data maps that will help answer a lot of questions about what went on in the first 200 million years after the Big Bang. It will also help to find other planets of distant stars that might support life.

If it makes it. The James Webb is scheduled for launch in June 2014, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:03 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

◊ Zen Alley

Photo ...

This is simply a detail shot of an alleyway near the Clear Mountain Zendo in Montclair. Zen is about increasing mindfulness, which includes noticing the little things. So here’s an alleyway with a lot of little things that you usually don’t notice.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:15 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, October 14, 2010

◊ Tea and the New Middle Ages (As The F.I.R.E. Goes Out)

Economics/Business ... Politics ...

The USA is experiencing some bad economic times, and everyone wonders where things are going. In order to get some sense of where we’re headed, I am going to review where our economy has been in recent years. So here goes; perhaps is will point where the road seems to be leading. If I’m right, we may be heading for the New Middle Ages.

Between 1945 and 1975, the US economy experienced a tremendous boom because of a tremendous boon; i.e., most of the factories in Europe and Japan were devastated. By comparison, the US had built up a huge industrial factory base during the WW1 and WW2 efforts, and this was fully intact and fairly modern (relative to the 1950s, anyway). Energy was cheap; oil and gas were available from US soil and were plentiful. Major discoveries soon happened in Arabia that made things even better.

The USA was by far the most developed industrial nation just after WW2. Great Britain and the Soviet Union were recovering relatively quickly, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:06 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Monday, October 11, 2010

◊ Don Triplett, Autistic #1

Aspergers ... Brain / Mind ... Personal Reflections ...

There’s a nice article in the October Atlantic Magazine about Donald Triplett, the first human being diagnosed with autism. This is a well written article containing a very edifying human interest story; but most important (to me, anyway), it provides a valuable perspective on just what we do and do not know about autism. Bottom line here: we’re still not really sure just what autism is, despite all of the pontifications by the medical and psychological sciences pretending to have strict definitions and diagnostic tools. At bottom, “we know autism when we see it”.

Over the past year or so, I have ‘studied up’ on the question of Aspergers Syndrome and the dreaded “autism spectrum”. I have read articles and books, watched videos about autistic people, and have rubbed elbows with a group of young adults who identify themselves as “Aspies” or “high functioning autistics” (at a monthly Meet-Up group). Obviously I’m trying to learn more about myself, about where I fit in. Yes, I could pay a shrink a couple of thousand bucks to get a “professional diagnosis”, but I’d rather “take the journey” and save myself the grand or two. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:29 am Read Comments (4) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, October 9, 2010

◊ RANDOM OBSERVATIONS

Current Affairs ... History ... Society ...

1.) Was the Vietnam war a mistake? It’s a question that still matters to us aging Baby Boomers. I had a thought on the subject the other day. It seems to me that there are wars that a nation has to fight. Those are the “holy wars”; where the other side is not just trying to plunder your bounty, but is trying to change your way of life. I.e., where the other side is trying to impose some sort of vision, be it religious (e.g. Christian or Islamic theocracy), or philosophic (e.g., Communist or Nazi fascist utopia). Whenever a nation or a tribe convinces itself that it has a plan for the world and that instituting that plan requires the use of firepower, about the only cure is to fight fire with fire. War is hell, but utopian visions that require belligerence are an even worse hell.

The USA fought the Vietnam war because it was trying to stop Soviet Russia from instituting its Marxist-Leninist vision, which indeed had been promulgated through the use of firepower and other belligerence. Was Vietnam really a Marxist holy war? It was being fought by Asian visionaries; but what was their vision? Did Ho Chi Minh want to see collective farming in California? It seems to me that the Viet Cong and the Vietnamese Communists were a bit more pragmatic and nationalistically inspired. From what little I know, the “eastern mind” is quite pragmatic. It doesn’t dwell on grand visions of how humankind should live their lives. This can be seen in the difference between Buddhism and the major western / middle-eastern faiths. (But admittedly, there are forms of dogmatic Buddhism, and Buddhist holy wars have been fought).

It’s too bad that Kennedy and Johnson and MacNamara and Rostow and Kissinger just couldn’t seem to grasp this. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:47 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, October 3, 2010

◊ Rocky, the Janitor of Social Virtue

Current Affairs ... Personal Reflections ... Society ...

As I get older, I give conservatives (the true conservatives, anyway) credit for putting emphasis on the notion of “values” and “virtues”. They have a point; no matter how good and effective the government is, no matter how extensive its social programs are, no matter how just and effectively enforced the laws are, a nation and the society within it will not hold together unless there are unwritten personal rules which everyone respects and plays by. That’s what values are all about; they are based around certain simple notions, such as the “Golden Rule”, and reflect many hundreds and thousands of years of accumulated wisdom passed on from generation to generation.

The conservatives complain that values aren’t holding up so well in present day America; we are trying to replace value-driven self-regulation with more and more programs and written regulations, and that is causing thing to go to hell. Well, I don’t entirely agree; but it is something to ponder.

In my pondering, I tried to think of some people from my youth (in the early 1960s, when values hadn’t yet declined too much yet according to some conservative thinkers) who truly lived “value-oriented” lives. People who could be called “the salt of the earth”. People who no one much noticed, but quietly did many tiny little things that collectively help keep life civilized. Yes, like the raindrops that collectively assemble themselves into rivers and oceans. I can think of many people from my family who were like that. But my memories of my parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and other relatives is probably clouded by sentimentality, given how long they have been gone. So I have picked out a guy who was not a member of my family, but still impressed me and many others that I grew up with as a really good person.

That guy’s name was Rocco Locarro, Rocky as everyone called him (I have discussed him before on this blog). He was the janitor at McKenzie Elementary School » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:45 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, September 30, 2010

◊ My Favorite Physicist

Science ...

Who is your favorite physicist? Most people don’t have one. Newton, Einstein, Maxwell, Hubble — great thinkers, but what’s the difference between them as human beings? They were all pretty nerdy, most likely.

Well, I happen to like modern science a whole lot, but up to now I never really thought much about who my favorite physicist would be. When you think about physics, you think about big abstract ideas, not about personalities and human struggles. But personalities and human struggles lie behind all that has been accomplished in our quest to understand the basic laws of the world that we inhabit and the universe that surrounds it. So here are some of my rough impressions regarding some noted physicists. I’m going to focus on the modern guys, as having seen them speaking on TV and read their words in magazines and knowing the times they live in, I have a better grounding in judging them as fellow travelers; versus say Marie Curie or Max Planck. This is not exactly going to be well researched, but for what it’s worth, here are my thoughts:

I have a lot of regard for Roger Penrose. Right now, he would have to be my favorite physicist » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:54 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, September 26, 2010

◊ Ignore the Poor — Until We Join Them

Economics/Business ... Society ...

I just updated the Poverty 101 page on my site to reflect the recently released 2009 update of the poverty level for the USA. My chart shows compares the poverty rate with real GDP per capita, since 1959. What it shows is this: over the past two years, the poverty level has started to climb again, homing in on the levels reached after the recessions of 1981 and 1991. GDP per capita has also gone down due to the “Great Recession”; the decline has been greater than for any other economic downturn occurring on the chart (i.e., since 1959).

Over the past 30 years, real GDP per person has climbed quite a bit, while the poverty rate has stayed within a fixed range, 12 to 15% (14.3% in 2009). So, economic growth has not been shared with the poorest segment of our society during this time (versus the 1960s and early 70s, when the poverty rate went from 22% to 12%). But since 1980 (when Ronald Reagan was elected, when manufacturing jobs rapidly started going overseas, and when the Baby Boomers came into authority), the poor and near-poor immediately feel the impact whenever there is an economic downturn. It’s basically a “heads I win, tails you lose” proposition for them.

There is an interesting article on the Smart Money web site questioning the relevance of the government’s GDP measure as an appropriate gauge for economic growth. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:03 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

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