Thursday, December 27, 2012

quote for the day

"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it." - Edmund Burke

Friday, December 21, 2012

astro picture for the day/ plus Golden Bough generalisation of magic and natural magic(mathematical science)


image credit T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage) and WIYN/NOAO/AURA/NSF

There's actually bigger downloads of this image; one would have taken me forty minutes to get the whole image;  i didn't bother.

other larger downloadables of this cygnus loop supernova image

------------------------------thought for the day extra

Seems that I posted about the differences between magic and natural magic(mathematics/science) awhile ago. 7/16/12

I've finally gotten around to reading "The Golden Bough".  Actually, I don't think I'll bother finishing it; seems the main themes have already repeated conclusions repeated; and, the rest of the book appears to be review of various sungods(Osirus, Adonis, Dionysius . . . can anybody tell the similarity linguistically to Jesus?).  Although for James Frazer, author of the book, these are more vegetation and farming cycle gods; but, the fact is that the cycle of farming goes with the cycle of the seasons - something astronomical and connected with the sun.  So, his research does indirectly confirm the B.C. timeframe predating of the Jesus Christ mythology.  Many people have noted that Jesus's turning water into wine must be a plagerism of the Dionysius myth, actually.  But, Mr Frazer's book gets a lot more into what I've been trying to point out about the relation of mathematical science and mythology(which modern comparitive mythology researchers don't seem to want to listen to).

What I've been trying to say is that mythology is poetry; poetry is analogy, and analogy is a major property of mathematics and mathematical science.  And, I've tried to trace the evolution of knowledge from ignorance to mathematics; and so, this book has been great for me!

James Frazer shows that before there was religion, there was a world of magic and people called sorcerers who tried to get nature to do their wishes by means of this magic.  Frazer defines religion is a way convenient for the history he found.  For instance, he shows that the Australian aboriginies are into magic and the never evolved to this higher idea of religion(basically, religion is institutionalised magic and magic coupled to ethics and one should say the Priest/King who says they rule by divine right).  In this way, the Aborigines of Australia had preserved the true primitive state before all this religion developed.  What the christian world would call the pagan African religions are actually people who have evolved a higher state of religion; and of course, the christians will tell you they have a higher state of religion than the pagans; but, see my blog!  Getting back to the whole magic thing . . . ;

In my post about magic versus mathematics as white magic, I showed some examples of how religions and magic tries to get nature to do what we want by going backwards.  Frazer gives a whole book showing many more examples. In fact, his original research went into twelve volumes.  All his references are in the twelve volumes; so, I won't try to reference and I didn't jot any of them down; i'll just reference his book.  So, I and Frazer and even Jacob Bronowski(and others like Ernst Casserir) have established the connections and differences between mathematics and previous efforts to understand the universe(mythology), and even some of its backwards nature.  Frazer gets into how magic and religion goes wrong as well.

Mr Frazer pushes the age of similar religions to Jesus Christ much further than even the sungod researchers of today; in that way, he's been ahead of them(although, sungod researchers reference and know about his work; they often don't like the idea of comparison and differences between mathematics and mythology as I've already noted) for awhile now!  And, he does so by a most remarkable commonality between all these different cultures religions; they all have these Priest/Kings who are beheaded and otherwise killed annually; generally yearly(nobody could right or research this book of his today; most cultures have moved on from these pagan practices).  Basically, people mythologized the heavens, the heavens symbolize the farming cycles, and since people's lives depend on the food, if something goes wrong with the harvest at the end of a years cylce, the Priest/King gets beheaded(or killed in some manner), and they bring in a new Priest/King and hopefully, he's a better magician than the last one! 

Here I should note say Romans 13(of the Christian New Testament) says, rulers rule by divine right, and pay your taxes; wonder who wrote this?  There's many mentions of "pay unto caesar what is his" in both the gospels and Pauline epistles as well.  Also, the Pauline Epistle called Titus also has kings get to rule by divine right.  I'm tempted to argue here that the Roman rulers made christianity so they can rule by divine right and not be struck down on a yearly cycle if the crops fail in a given year!  Jesus Christ is a friendly messiah; he dies for your sins; he makes the sacrifice for your bullshit; before, a sacrifice was made in flesh and blood, and no roman ruler wanted that!

James Frazer shows much more of the various customs and where they come from; things like jewelry comes from trying to catch the soul from escaping the body.  Where christmas trees and even christmas comes from.  But, he also gets into taboos and superstitions of all cultures.

Part of what I've tried to show, argue against is the refusal of the supernatural religious to deny a new scientific theory(that's been proven correct experimentally) because it conflicts with their holy sacred not to be touched beliefs. One major such ancient denial of ancient peoples was iron. Basically, they had a taboo against iron. Point is anything new and novel excites suspicion and distrust; the fact of taboos against iron is proof that taboos are made to stop innovation and new ideas.  Mankind is the technologically and scientific dependent species; science is the peacefull adventure; how can mankind understand this when they play such taboo games?

I should have defined taboos earlier.  James Frazer shows there's positive magic and negative magic; positive magic are charms; negative magic leads to taboos. There's two kinds of magic - immitative(analogy) and contact. And, as already indicated, the negative magic leads to taboos.   Taboos and superstitions lead to my point about people playing vagueness games; they're always using evasive language to stop further thought or to trick; some of my favorites are "believe and you will believe", and "god works in mysterious ways."  I like to rewatch a nanotech show not generally available that has for instance Marvin Minky saying, when we finally get nanomanufacturing going, perhaps, we'll build a little car(and he rolls a lego car back and forth); i mean, he's so affraid to say, well, maybe we'll build an a.i. or a space rocket to launch a space station; he's so affraid of som many people pointing out some taboos and fears, that he says, "maybe we'll just build a little car." I find that most people talk in these ways; they're constantly throwing out words to test what your beliefs are; they can't just state facts and logic and not fear reprisal from me or someone else.  Can you imagine scientists and mathematians writing papers where they don't lay down what they did, but say, "did we accomplish our goal?"  Or even "what was the solution to the experiment or calculation we just did?"  Mathematics and science is about testing ideas without buying the solution or holding someone up at gunpoint to get the right answer.  Or even the mere verbal threat of what does this or that result mean socio-politicaly.

Yet, I'm finding that mathematicians and scientists are forced to mix religion(which never says, "question me") and mathematical science - whether they want to or not. It's increasingling that they grow up wanting to.  But, I'm also finding that others do so almost as if a parlay.   Parlay of "Pirates of the Carribean" is a recent finding of vagueness gaming and mixing up religion/science(as christianity did; see for instance this wiki of Origin where it's stated that Origin wanted to make chrisitanity a higher philosophy than hellenism . . . Greek/Plato mathematical philosophy . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origen ) .  Basically, all the 'everyone's religion is correct at the same time" is just a big parlay game because argueing with the religious gets nowhere or violent; so everyone says everyone is correct, and there is to be no fact finding or logical anaylses of anybody's theories; how does mankind progress with this parlay philosophy?

I wanted to get the first parlay by the Elizabeth Swan character in "Pirates of the Carribean" but, I guess this will work just fine!


I was remembered something about Pirates of the Carribean having this parlay concept; i was just like this Jack Sparrow character trying to get the word off the tip of my tongue!

-----------------------------------science/technology extra for the day

here's a good sign that the recent ability to engineer proteins by means of artifical evolution is powerfull enough to make arbitrary nanomechanical parts.

I believe i've already linked to an article reporting the recent advances in artifically evolving/engineering proteins; i think that article even mentions a researcher saying he's going full speed ahead on using this ability to making protein nanomanufacturing; the article above is a good sign that he and others can accompish this pretty soon; if not this year, then probably before the next year is out(meaning two years).

-------------------------------note edit extra,


I grew up listening to this album from time to time; little did I know that someday I'd learn where this "John Barleycorn must die" weird album and song idea came from.  I found it in James Frazier's "Golden Bough"! 


Tuesday, December 18, 2012

astro picture for the day


ESA/NASA Hubble Space Telescope image

-----------------------------------------------------------------thought for the day

In my previous incarnation of this blog, I mentioned Cardano who more or less stole Tartaglia's solution to the cubic equation and then innovated complex numbers to solve cubics.  I mentioned that in his biography, he mentions how he'd torture himself to ease the pains of life; how he'd growl at people to instill fear in them.  I also mentioned how in his later years, in his collaborations with a Ferrari(who solved the general closed form fourth degree equation), he became less of a fear monger.  I mentioned his biography because it was proof that people fear monger.  I've been trying to argue that people fear monger only to be thrown into a psych ward for saying so.  I've shown that in general, the religious fear monger to get their way(you're going to hell if you don't believe in me and my god; Jesus Christ says this also), and that some mathematical scientists, or even the majority through time as they grow older perhaps, reason, and that reason is the peacefull way for humanity; and, that's a big part of why I wrote the previous incarnation of this blog and more or less why I've decided to pretty much put it back up. Well, I've found another interesting proof of fear mongering instead of reason to get ones way - torture instruments!

People torture and use torture instruments for many reasons; sometimes they want to instill fear in the populace; other times however, it's because people are acting up; they can't get the information out of them peacefully, so in times of desperation, people resort to torture to get valuable information out of them.  No matter how one looks at the very fact of torture instruments, torture instruments are proof of people playing vagueness games and fear mongering.


I'm not sure what this is; but, it looks gruesome enough!

--------------------------------------------science/tech news for the day!

Dwave goes from a hundred to a thousand qbits!


Sunday, December 16, 2012

astro picture for the day/Saturn V thought for the day


Image Credit: Hubble Legacy Archive, ESA, NASA; Processing - Donald Waid


Planet Earth:Tales from other Planets P2

Planet Earth:Tales from other Planets P3

Planet Earth:Tales from other Planets P4

Planet Earth:Tales from other Planets P5

Planet Earth:Tales from other Planets P6

I show this episode of "Planet Earth" because it involves the Saturn V and the Apollo program's discoveries and rock collecting; still, the furthest Humans have ever explored on their own(without just robots).  Note: there's now 2 Planet Earth video series; the most recent is good photography and not bad intellectually; but, it unfortunatelly uses the same title and is not as intellectual as the Planet Earth video series I grew up with.

Anyways, Geologists knew that the rocks of the Earth have generally been turned over; we don't have the original crust; and they suspected that the Moon holds clues and has rocks that go back much further to the beginning of our solar system.  We couldn't get there till around 1968 with the Saturn V.

The Saturn V is still the most powerfull rocket ever  built by mankind(Nasa engineers recently made a rocket, turned it on braced just to prove they can build a bigger more powerfull rocket; i guess there's been some recent public outcry that we havn't gotten back to the moon; Nasa's solution, just do a earth based demonstration).

The Saturn V rocket was built to a program design decided in the early 1960s.  Seems that Werner Von Braun and his rocket team wanted a multi rocket launch that would send up the spaceship that would be assembled in orbit; but, others wanted to make one gigantic rocket.  Werner Von Braun's plan would have been more adaptable to missions to other planets; the one giant rocket would just barelly get a man to land on the moon; the selected the one giant rocket.  See, for every pound of the manned spaceship that would orbit the moon and land on the moon, you'd need a certain large proportion more(that would be directly proportional) mass and energy of fuel in the lower rocket stages.  This is why Nasa and Saturn V rocket engineers say the apollo spacecraft is such a great technological feat; it stuffs all the navigational, environmental and the ability to withstand the twenty thousand miles per hour descent back into Earth's atmosphere and so on; but, the point is that the program design led to this just barelly being able to land on the Moon.  Recently, lots of Apollo program and Apollo 11 landing videos like to point out how if it wasn't for the great piloting of Neil Armstrong to land the Eagle with just thirty seconds left of fuel; if they had ran out, they couldn't have launched back up into lunar orbit much less get back to Earth.  See, Neil Armstrong noticed that were they wanted to land was too rocky, so he had to power up a little bit, and he only had less than a minute of fuel left to decide whereelse to land it; if he doesn't decide, he crash lands somewhere, or if he does and doesn't have any fuel left, well . . . ;  but, the point that few make is that this was all a result of the mission design decided for no other reason than to land a man on the moon before "this decade was out."

Getting back to the point about how every pound not scrapped off the apollo spacecraft at the very top of the Satun V means that much more fuel and metal at the very bottom or first stage rocket.  As it turned out, the first stage rocket design was finalized and in production before people realised this; this greatly constrained the second stage of the Satun V; it's universally recognized that the second stage is the masterpiece of the Saturn V. It is the liquid oxygen/hydrogen stage of the rocket because of this; they didn't want to use liquid oxygen/hydrogen because it's so technologically hard to do.  Rocket engineers like to point out that they needed to do some pretty sophisticated materials science to make the blunt nose solution of the apollo reentry craft work.  The materials science for the second stage is even more astounding; they had to find a material that didn't turn brittle when in contact with liquid oxygen/hydrogen; i'd have to look it up for the exact name, but they found a novel material that actually gets harder with the colder temperatures of liquid oxygen/hydrogen!  This is not just sheet metal or steel!  What's more, the second stage engineers(see my Harrison Storms post just below this post) had to scrape away all the weight they could to make room for bigger payloads above.  I'm still not sure I understand the internal structural elements of the second stage; but, they describe it as an arch solution.  They had to invent novel machine tools in clean rooms to make sure that all weight possible was scraped off; what's more they x-rayed and sonar scanned every inch of the fabricated structural elements of the second stage to make sure there were no structural faults.  They found they could not just assemble it horizontally, but they had to do so vertically; they had to make assembly procedures for the second stage that had to be followed to the letter even in the Saturn V assembly building; this was a delicate instrument!

Nasa engineers statistically analysed every bolt; they mapped out where every bolt came from all the way back to the mine the material came from.

When the Saturn V rocket was on the launch pad, hugh liquid oxygen/hydrogen pumps had to fuel the Saturn V in a precise scheduled and calculated manor right before launch.  I can't seem to find a picture of these pumps with a quick google search; but, I recall seeing these. 

The parachutes turn out to be a novel technological solution as well, they needed strong material and very largue parachutes for the reentry spacecraft; and, they needed to stuff it in a very small volume; they manged to use a vacuum to suck out all the air from between the parachute material fibers; the result was the parachutes were stuffed into a very small volume at such a density as hard wood.

People like to say that one of the side benefits of the Apollo space program was that we got to see our home world planet Earth from space crystal clear.


and of course,


1969: Apollo 11 (NASA)

The Incredible Journey of Apollo 12

Apollo 13 - Houston, We've Got A Problem

Apollo 14: Mission to Fra Mauro 1971 NASA 3rd Moon Landing Alan Shepard

Apollo 15 "In the Mountains of the Moon" - NASA Space Program & Moon Landings

Apollo 16 "Nothing So Hidden" - NASA Space Program & Moon Landings Documentary

Apollo 17 "On The Shoulders of Giants" - NASA Space Program & Moon Landings

People are also eager that we should go to space without all our past baggage.  People fear this group or that group going and spreading their false ideas. Well, this is kind of what I've tried to do in this blog; to make a unified factual/logical understanding of everything.   But, as Jacob Bronowski says, "These people are all anxious that we shall behave well, and yet that we shall not question how we behave."

My effort here of course can only outline and point the way. It almost certainly will not be listened to by the time the nano-era will come. I think I've shown this is possible; i've argued my viewpoint is not so bad even if there's some harsh realities humanity must face; i believe humanity should question and put their religions on the shelf and let them collect dust.  But, getting to some science/tech news for the day . . .

A month or so ago, both the dna and protein folding pathways to the nano-era made pretty good breakthroughs.

protein folding becomes reliable enough to make arbitrary nanomechanical parts and probably enzyme like chemical reaction specificity

Dna-nanomanufacturing goes from a given nanostructure in weeks, to days/hours, to now minutes!

Moving beyond Paul Rothemund's dna-origami(which improved on Ned Seemans pioneering efforts)

Dna-Nanomanufacturing has added chemical reactivity to its abilities  Dna-nanomanufacturing has always had one of the key properties for nanomanufacturing - self-assembly; now, it had the other key property; chemical reactivity.

The protein folding and the dna-nanoblocks that go beyond Paul Rothemund's "dna-origami" was announced about a month ago.  The dna-nanomanufacturing of arbitrary nanomechanical structures with Paul Rothemund's single strand origami approach was announced a few days ago.  Bottom line, I'd expect the ability to make non-Drexler daimondoid nanomanufacturing nanofactories in two months or less; they can design, build and test nanomachines in a single day now!  Dna-nanomanufacturing can remake the world in two years or so; lots of people will probably work on that; the Drexler crowd will not waste time; they will work to bootstrap from dna-nanomanufacturing to a more general capability nanomanufacturing ability(probably combining dna-nanomanufacturing and protein folding and artifical proteins; i'm forgetting the words).  And, then they'll use that to bootstrap to daimondoid nanomanufacturing.  However the future happens, the future is now.

There's also great work in quantum computers.  But, i won't link there right now.






Saturday, December 8, 2012

quote for the day

"The things that are going to give us trouble are the things we havn't thought of yet." - Harrison Storms

What can you say for Harrison Storms?  What a resume!  B-25(I've been in a B-25 - crawling around.  I got a side cramp when crawling from the bomb bay into the cockpit; i laughed thinking that if this happened while I was in ww2 I would have been dead!), P-51 mustang, the various F-100s star sabres, X-15 spaceplane, the XB-70 Valkyrie, and the S-2 rocket(the second stage of the Saturn V rocket which is actually the high tech piece of the Saturn V).  Harrison Storms unfortunaitely ended his career with a black spot; he was the 'stupid one' who made a 100% oxygen cabin for the Apollo man module which ended up killing Gus Grissam(a space enthusiast favorite), Chaffee and White.  Harrison Storms was willing to push boundaries.