Syzygy Rhythms

Q. : What if the Buddha had taken on a cowboy as a student? How would the conversation go?

Buddha: "Life is suffering."

Cowboy: "Well, shit ..."

The following text of the Fourteen items of belief which have been accepted as fundamental principles in both the Southern and Northern sections of Buddhism, by authoritative committees to whom they were submitted by me personally, have so much historical importance that they are added to the present Edition of the Buddhist Catechism as an Appendix. It has very recently been reported to me by H. E. Prince Ouchtomsky, the learned Russian Orientalist, that having had the document translated to them, the Chief Lamas of the great Mongolian Buddhist monasteries declared to him that they accept every one of the propositions as drafted, with the one exception that the date of the Buddha is by them believed to have been some thousands of years earlier than the one given by me. This surprising fact had not hitherto come to my knowledge. Can it be that the Mongolian Sangha confuse the real epoch of Sâkya Muni with that of his alleged next predecessor? Be this as it may, it is a most encouraging fact that the whole Buddhistic world may now be said to have united to the extent at least of these Fourteen Propositions.

H. S. O.

_____

Colonel Henry Steel Olcott [1832-1907] was the first western Buddhist convert, probably since antiquity. He co-founded the Theosophical Society and was its first president. The only contributor to the 19th century southern Buddhist revival who was born a Protestant, Olcott was able to promote Eastern ideas to western society.

The Buddhist Catechism

FUNDAMENTAL BUDDHISTIC BELIEFS.

I. Buddhists are taught to show the same tolerance, forbearance, and brotherly love to all men, without distinction; and an unswerving kindness. towards the members of the animal kingdom.

II. The universe was evolved, not created; and it functions according to law, not according to the caprice of any God.

III. The truths upon which Buddhism is founded are natural. They have, we believe, been taught in successive kalpas, or world periods, by certain illuminated beings called BUDDHAS, the name BUDDHA meaning "Enlightened."

IV. The fourth Teacher in the present Kalpa was Sâkya Muni, or Gautama Buddha, who was born in a royal family in India about 2,500 years ago. He is an historical personage and his name was Siddârtha Gautama.

V. Sâkya Muni taught that ignorance produces desire, unsatisfied desire is the cause of rebirth, arid rebirth, the cause of sorrow. To get rid of sorrow, therefore, it is necessary to escape rebirth; to escape rebirth, it is necessary to extinguish desire; and to extinguish desire, it is necessary to destroy ignorance.

VI. Ignorance fosters the belief that rebirth is a necessary thing. When ignorance is destroyed the worthlessness of every such rebirth, considered as an end in itself, is perceived, as well as the paramount need of adopting a course of life by which the necessity for such repeated rebirths can be abolished. Ignorance also begets the illusive and illogical idea that there is only one existence for man, and the other illusion that this one life is followed by states of unchangeable pleasure or torment.

VII. The dispersion of all this ignorance can be attained by the persevering practice of an all-embracing altruism in conduct, development of intelligence, wisdom in thought, and destruction of desire for the lower personal pleasures.

VIII. The desire to live being the cause of rebirth, when that is extinguished rebirths cease and the perfected individual attains by meditation that highest state of peace called Nirvâṇa.

IX. Sâkya Muni taught that ignorance can be dispelled and sorrow removed by the knowledge of the four Noble Truths, viz.:—

X. Right Meditation leads to spiritual enlightenment, or the development of that Buddha-like faculty which is latent in every man.

XI. The essence of Buddhism, as summed up by the Tathâgata (Buddha) himself, is—

XII. The universe is subject to a natural causation known as "Karma." The merits and demerits of a being in past existences determine his condition in the present one. Each man, therefore, has prepared the causes of the effects which he now experiences.

XIII. The obstacles to the attainment of good karma may be removed by the observance of the following precepts, which are embraced in the moral code of Buddhism, viz.: (1) Kill not; (2) Steal not; (3) Indulge in no forbidden sexual pleasure; (4) Lie not; (5) Take no intoxicating or stupefying drug or liquor. Five other precepts which need not be here enumerated should be observed by those who would attain, more quickly than the average layman, the release from misery and rebirth.

XIV. Buddhism discourages superstitious credulity. Gautama Buddha taught it to be the duty of a parent to have his child educated in science and literature. He also taught that no one should believe what is spoken by any sage, written in any book, or affirmed by tradition, unless it accord with reason.

Drafted as a common platform upon which all Buddhists can agree.

H. S. OLCOTT, P. T. S.

Respectfully submitted for the approval of the High Priests of the nations which we severally represent, in the Buddhist Conference held at Adyar, Madras, on the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th of January 1891 (A. B. 2434).

BURMAH.

Approved on behalf of the Buddhists of Burmah, this 3rd clay of February, 1891 (A. B. 2434):

Tha-tha-na-baing Saydawgyi; Aung Myi Shwebôn Sayadaw; Me-ga-waddy Sayadaw; Hmat-Khaya Sayadaw; Hti-lîn Sayadaw; Myadaung Sayadaw; Hla-Htwe Sayadaw; and sixteen others.

CEYLON.

Approved on behalf of the Buddhists of Ceylon this 25th day of February, 1891 (A. B. 2434); Mahanuwara upawsatha puspârâma vihârâdhipati Hippola

Dhamma Rakkhita Sobhitâbhidhâna Mahâ Nâyaka Sthavirayan wahanse wamha.

(Hippola Dhamma Rakkhita Sabhitâbhidhàna, High Priest of the Malwalta Vihare at Kandy).

(Signed) Hippola.

Mahanuwara Asgiri vihârâdhipati Yatawattê Chandajottyâbhidhana Mahâ Nâyaka Sthavirayan wahanse wamha—(Yatawattê Chandajottyâbhidhana, High Priest of Asgiri Vihare at Kandy).

(Signed) Yatawatte.

Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala Stipâdasthâne saha Kolamba palate pradhana Náyaka Sthavirayo (Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala, High Priest of Adam's Peak and the District of Colombo).

(Signed) H. Sumangala.

Maligawe Prâchina Pustakâlâyadhyakshaka Suriyagoda Sonuttara Sthavirayo (Suriyagoda Sonuttara, Librarian of the Oriental Library at the Temple of the Tooth Relic at Kandy).

(Signed) S. Sonuttara.

Sugata Sâsanadhaja Vinayâ chariya Dhammalankârâbhidhâna Nayaka Sthavira.

(Signed) Dhammalankara,

Pawara neruttika chariya Mahâ Vibhavi Subhuti of Waskaduwa.

(Signed) W. Subhuti.

JAPAN.

Accepted as included within the body of Northern Buddhism.

CHITTAGONG.

Accepted for the Buddhists of Chittagong.

Freedom of communication, such as the Internet provides,  allows people to reorganize into new multifaceted tribal units. These units will not be based on shared geography, culture, national identity, religion, etc. as in the past, but on compatible psychological tendencies as represented by similar patterns of chakra activation.  I.e. the intellectuals will tend to band together in a global community of thinkers, gamers etc. and the global or world blue social chakra will be greatly enhanced. This will also occur for the other chakra’s as well. So the formation or evolution of the “human Over being” will likewise be enhanced. The benefits provided of the global Over being, if properly balanced, will lead to the evolution of all of humanity and so help us all. To further this….

An inter-locking set of clusters of associated human beings, interacting globally. Atoms form molecules, humans form tribes.

Stories that might some day be told but more than likely not, or, at least not to anyone with whom you have an acquaintance.



I.   The Tale of Oqo

     Dwelling at the margins of dandyism was no easy task for Oqo on the shores of the Arctic Ocean. Drops of melted blubber often spattered on his ruffled suit and stained his silken stockings.



II. The Unintended Prayer

      From time to time, the garbage from Heaven was dumped and rained down upon the Earth. Precious baubles to those below, the answers to prayers for some. One day during a particularly thorough cleaning of the divine abode, a long unused angelic lyre was inadvertently tossed out. Spiraling downwards, it landed, kerplunk, right on the edge of a bean field.  

  

III.   The Apotheosis of John Kirkpatrick

   It occurred one day, albeit unexpectedly to those who knew him, without fanfare or acclaim. The sun was shining, birds were singing and people were going about their business as usual. I was walking down the street, intent on going to visit the local convenience store and picking up some microwave popcorn before stopping over at his place for a quick visit or perhaps staying longer and seeing a movie if events were propitious for that. Little did I realize what was going to take place on my arrival there.



IV. Requiem for a Twinkie
   
    We lived in the post-colonial, post-petroleum, post-Communist, post-industrial, post-Modern, pre-Warp, pre-cloning, pre-eugenics, pre-World Government world. It was not the best of times, and could easily become the worst of times if not for …


Random snippets or opening sentences.....

1. (O.S.) "In my post-hallucigenic state I was tired but very relaxed. I was sitting on a chair on my back porch enjoying the evening breeze of the late summer when I heard a __________ .

2. "Why are so many people out standing or sitting in fields tonight?", I asked.

     "Well, our seers have said that tonight there is a high probability that someone might become enlightened and so people are out trying to see if they can catch a vibe from the event, see a light or to send out good vibes to the potential Buddha to help him or her during their night of trial", my guide responded.

"Oh"... I said. "That's something that would never happen in America today. Wow!"

3. "Why do you want to become a nun?", the women standing in the doorway of the Convent said.
    "Because I can never have sex again." she stated desperately....
     
     

When All Is Said And Done...

When the arguments and conflicts of today are long forgotten....

When the battles of Armageddon have been fought and become a distant memory, the millennium long since passed, evil vanquished...

When all the civilizations of man have risen and fallen in the distant passing of time...

When others that may come after man have risen, built their cities, sung their songs and gone their ways upon the Earth....

When all Messiahs have come, done their duty and moved on....

When all sentient beings in the solar system have risen and died, or left and gone on to the stars...

When the Earth and Moon revolve around each other, same face to same face...

When the continents have ground to a halt, the last volcano has erupted, cooled and become silent...

When voices are heard on the Earth no more...

When the ageing Sun has exhausted its once plentiful hydrogen, melded it into helium, then sputtered, contracted, bloated, expanded, shining for a time as a giant red star, then feebly contracts and collapses one last time into a tiny, dense, white dwarf star, illuminating the solar system with its intense blue light, then over the eons, cools and fades into oblivion...

When unaccountable races and intelligences have arisen, spread throughout the stars and vanished, one by one...

When the Last Judgment has come and gone, fading into the distant twilight of eons past, and all beings face eternity in their heavens and their hells...

When all the stars themselves go slowly out here and there and are not rekindled, the universe growing slowly darker, emptier, colder and silent....

When all the black holes, points of crushed matter and dead stars,  scattered here and there, each in their own turn, evaporate and boil away, vanishing in a final cataclysmic explosion....

Or the universe slows its expansion, grinds to a halt and then begins to inexorably collapse onto itself, finally vanishing as the dead hulks of stars and planets are squashed together and all is crushed ....

When the beings of all the hells slowly awake, make their peace with God and ascend into heaven...or have vanished into the peace of nonexistence...

When the last bodhisattva has become a Buddha and all sentient beings are enlightened....

In the twilight of eternity when peace reigns supreme...

When all is said and done, what next?






And God said "Let There Be Light..."

A Meditation for Earth Day

We are a civilization of the wheel. The dynamism of our modern industrial society is literally powered by the turning of wheels and shafts. We have now become almost completely dependent on these turnings like no previous civilization in history. Rotating wheels and shafts are used in electrical power production, transportation and small scale mechanical tasks. They are the muscles of our social body. Four types of rotating shaft are omnipresent that fall into two pairs. In the first pair are the rotating shaft of the electric power generator and the shaft of the inverse of the generator more commonly known as the electric motor. The second pair consists of the shafts in internal combustion engines and the shafts in jet engines. The driving of these shafts consumes most of the energy that our civilization produces, creating both our high standard of living and our most severe environmental problems. We cannot live without them and we face major changes in how we utilize them in the coming decades.

Electric motors are simple devices that can be built in a large range of sizes from the almost microscopic to the powerful motors in trains. More than half of all electricity produced in the United States today is consumed by electric motors. In an electric motor, an electric current energizes an electromagnet that pushes against the magnetic field of a permanent magnet. By attaching either the electromagnet or the permanent magnet to a shaft and varying the electric current in the right way, the mutual repulsion/attraction of the two magnets causes the shaft to turn. The simplicity and great range of size and power of electric motors has insured that they are put to a great many uses. They start our automobile engines, turn our fans, computer disk drives, tape drives and the many small drills used in dentistry and carpentry and the blenders, grinders, etc. in our kitchens. Wherever small mechanical motions are needed for control or manipulation, one will find electric motors. The electric motor is also the primary drive in many urban trains, subways, buses, trams and some cars. They are also present in smaller vehicles such as motorized toys and robots. A close relative of the electric generator, the alternator in automobiles, supplies electrical current to our car batteries to keep them charged up. As common as electric motors are today, they will become even more common in the future as they replace internal combustion engines in transportation.

Internal combustion engines rely upon pure chemical energy for power and hence need fuel. That fuel must be specially made in order to serve them. The most common engine is the internal combustion engine found in most automobiles, motorcycles, boats, ships and some planes. The other main engine type is the jet engine found in jet aircraft. The smallest internal combustion engines are used in lawn mowers, chain saws and toys such as model airplanes and boats. Engines are commonly used for vehicles because their fuel is readily portable and generally they are capable of putting out greater power than electric motors. Vehicles with electric motors have to rely upon batteries that have traditionally been heavy and incapable of supplying the energy required for long trips.  

The basic design of electric generators, electric motors and internal combustion engines has not changed significantly  since the start of 20th century. The only real innovation has been the introduction of the jet engine in the mid 20th century. Jet engines have also undergone little change in their fundamental design after the early stages of innovation. Most design improvements have been to increase efficiency and power output. So there is little hope that we will find some other kind of device with a radically different design to fulfill our mechanical needs any time soon. We have all been entertained by the future scenarios so often portrayed in science fiction movies and novels where cars fly, teleportation exists and exotic forms of fuel or energy are used but unless some new discovery in physics is made, we are likely to be using electric motors and engines for a long time into future. 

All these shafts are powered by consuming various forms of energy and converting that energy into the mechanical energy of the rotating shaft. The energy consumption divides into two types: chemical fuel for combustion engines and all other types (chemical, hydro, nuclear, wind, etc.) for electric power generators. The chemical fuel comes mostly from the fossil fuels of petroleum, coal and natural gas with a much smaller contribution from renewable sources such as wood and bio-fuels. As long as we rely upon engines, we must produce copious amounts of fuel to serve them. The only renewable sources of fuel available are based on processing plants raised for that purpose. The creation of fuel from plants consumes a lot of plant life. For example, to fill a gas tank of an SUV requires enough corn to feed a family for a year. At the present, it seems that there is simply not enough plant life on the earth to support both the fuel and food requirements of the world population at per capita levels of consumption current in the United States. If engines are phased out for ground transport in favor of electric motors then much of the burden of creating mass quantities of fuel will be relieved. But at the present time, it seems that we, especially Americans, will have to decrease our total energy usage in the future as fossil fuels begin to run out.  

Though it seems that in the future we will be driving electric vehicles, there does not seem to be any viable alternative to jet aircraft for air travel. Electric airplanes don't seem practical. Even if they are feasible they would probably be quite slow compared to jets. In the future the use of the remaining reserves of petroleum will probably have to be restricted for use as jet fuel and for petrochemicals to make solvents, cleaners, plastic materials, drugs, etc. Perhaps biofuels will be used for jet fuel in the long term future. If a viable alternative to jet aircraft is not found then the future population of the Earth may just have to get used to much slower long-distance transport in general.

The electricity provided by electric generators is now the preeminent source of power used in our homes and buildings. In the past humans relied upon innumerable small fires to locally heat and light their homes and work places. Now these millions of small fires have been gathered together into a few thousand great fires that burn at centralized locations often far removed from the main population centers. The power of fire is now almost entirely utilized for the generation of electric power. Instead of cutting wood from forests for fuel and using the fat of animals to make candles and oil for lamps, we power these relatively few great fires with coal mined from the earth and petroleum and natural gas pumped from the ground. Coal, oil and gas are burned to heat water and turn it into steam to move the turbines in electric generators. A more modern fuel, only discovered in the late 19th century, is the radioactive element uranium. The heat produced from the controlled fission of uranium atoms is used similarly in nuclear power stations to heat water or other liquids for electric generation. The point of powering the rotation of  the shaft of an electric generator is to move magnets relative to an electrical conductor thus creating an electric current in the conductor via electromagnetic induction as the magnetic field sweeps through the conductor. That electric current is then fed into the electrical grids that distribute the electricity via a vast network of wires and transformers to light and heat the buildings of our cities, towns and farms and run all our numerous electrical devices.



The older use of fire to directly to heat some buildings has not completely died out. Most of these local heating fires are fueled by natural gas distributed in a network of pipelines from a centralized location or delivered to local tanks by trucks from a supply center. Another fuel source is heating oil refined from petroleum and delivered via trucks to supply furnaces. Just as most people no longer have to kill their own animals for food, raise their own crops or get water from a well, we no longer have to deal with fire on a daily basis anymore. Much of the messiness of life in pre-industrial society has been removed from our sight.   

Although fire is the one element of the four elements in the Greek scheme of things primarily associated with energy we also use water and wind power to generate some electricity. The moving water in rivers was tapped from time to time in the past to turn water wheels for grinding grain or simple industrial tasks. Now these mills have been shut down and appropriate rivers have been corralled by great dams that trap the water in artificial lakes known as reservoirs. As the water flows through tunnels in or near the base of the dam it is used to turn the shafts of electric generators in hydroelectric plants. Hydroelectric power currently provides about  3% of the world’s energy. The wind has recently begun to be tapped as well for electric generation and will be used more heavily in the future as fossil fuels become depleted.  Water and wind power are renewable, much less polluting and environmentally safer than the burning of fossil fuels or the use of radioactive heat and so tapping these sources can only be a relatively good thing.

Solar power plants using solar cells are the only large scale form of electric energy generation that does not use electric generators. Solar photoelectric cells  produce direct current as opposed to the alternating current of electric generators. To distribute the electricity produced from large scale fields of solar panels will require the construction of a high voltage direct current distribution network. The technology already exists for this kind of system and it will be expensive to construct, but once in place it can be used for a long time.

The electrical grids generate electricity as it is demanded. There is currently no way to store electricity in any significant amounts. When more electricity is needed, generators must be run at a higher rate or more generators must be started up to meet the demand. When demand decreases the appropriate number of generators must be similarly turned down or turned off. This is relatively easily accomplished by changing the rate of fossil fuel burning in conventional electric generating plants. In nuclear power stations the rate at which heat is produced can be similarly regulated and the generators can simply be decoupled from the heat source. Hydroelectric dams can regulate the amount of water flowing through them by simply opening and closing valves to let more or less water flow through them. In contrast, solar power and wind power stations in the future will not be able to increase power on demand when the sun is not shining or the wind isn't blowing. To make these renewable sources of energy a practical major source of electric power will require finding ways of storing the electricity produced when nature is cooperative, as well as ways to transport the electricity long distances from the prime locations where the sun shines abundantly and the wind blows strongly and steadily.

A society based on the renewable energy sources of wind, solar, hydro, tidal and geothermal power would be a society that no longer makes use of fire and combustion as a primary energy source. The everyday use of fire will have been almost eliminated with the possible exception of jet and rocket travel. If we manifest such a society in the future, the skies of the Earth will become more clear from the smoke of man made fires than at anytime since humans first discovered and began using fire hundreds of thousands of years ago. May we all look forward to such a clean and natural future for our world.

Dear Child of Mine,


Don't impede my centipede, for he was here long before us

Don't belabor the spats of the saber-tooth cats

Or gawk at the mighty auk and dodo show

Don't cackle at the pterodactyl's frightsome flapping

Or fail in awe at the Neandertal's wherewithal to survive and
thrive in snow-bound mammoth haunted lands

And upon the iguandon's beaks and frilly crests let rest your
mind on their long success through Cretaceous times

Do not slight the trilobite's many sea floor rambles in aeons past

Or gape at the naked ape's glorious rise and tumultuous fall

For one can surmise that extinction awaits one and all!

Telephone sings, wedding rings
My heart soars like a butterfly in the evening fluttering over the ocean's
tranquil surface in clear moonlight.
Flight begins anew.
An old tradition, timeless and repeating through the ages...

Answer the damn phone!
Hello?  Click...
Silence.
Well...
Moonlight shines through the window.

I've had the pleasure of witnessing the unfolding of a minor web phenomenon sweeping the YouTube community. This refers to the growing popularity of the "The Two Talking Cats" video above. It IS very cute, a sentiment repeated over and over in the videos numerous comments. I first discovered this a few months ago and put a link to it in my LJ entry of October 15 titled "Verbal Icon Retrospective" (see the Penultimate Comments link). At that time the number of viewings was something less than 30,000. It was around 12,500 or so when I first watched it although I don't remember the exact figure. Now the number of viewings is over 5.5 million and growing rapidly! And an alternative posting on YouTube of the same video has over 1.9 million viewings. The video is currently experiencing an exponential growth in exposure. But eventually every exponential growth curve reaches a saturation point. I wonder how many viewings that will be when it begins to level off?

The original video has spawned a second wave that are "translations" of the cats speech. The translation that I find the most humorous, that I discovered yesterday, had over 2.5 million views. Obviously there is something about the two kitties that touches people in a striking fashion. Isn't that what great art is supposed to do? Plato discussed archetypal Forms for different qualities to explain the phenomena of classes and universals which makes language possible and allows us to comprehend the plethora of particulars we are faced with in everyday life. Maybe there is an archetypal Form of Cuteness that the two kitties are close to tapping. Apparently Stina and Mossy are well on their way to becoming world-wide celebrities. Stay posted. Meooow!

 

It's nice to see that the French still appreciate the work of Claudius Ptolemy and his geocentric picture of the Cosmos pictured below. Of course using a geocentric reference frame BOTH the Sun and Moon (and Mars and Venus for that matter) rotate around the Earth. So I really don't understand the above result. Probably Copernicus AND Ptolemy would each roll over in their graves if they saw the video above. On the other hand, is France even a country?

Last night I heard a ruckus on my front porch and discovered this small whiskered dog-like creature loitering there. It was quite plump. When I first went out there the cat bowl was empty and he (or she) had knocked over a green container that was leaning over the water bowl. He seemed pretty insistent on getting a drink of water in spite of that. I removed the container and put a bit of food in the cat bowl. He wasn't too shy or aggressive, just hungry and thirsty. In the spring and early summer  I was getting regular visits from a possum or two but I haven't seen any sign of them for months now.

In the early morning I had an extended dream sequence. In part of the sequence I was going to a kind of open air area where there were rows upon rows of folded chairs. People were gathering there to watch a movie of some sort. I went in and sat in one of the back rows on the left edge of the square-like arrangement of chairs. Just behind me was an open row for people to walk back and forth and another tier of chairs beyond that. The chairs were mostly all occupied by various people. There was the suggestion of a shadowy building around the set of chairs with relatively transparent walls. It seemed to be nighttime or twilight. After I sat down I noticed that there were a few wolves hanging around just outside the building on my left.  That caused me a bit of apprehension. One of the wolves seemed to notice that I was looking at him. He was quite a big wolf. He trotted around to the back of the building and came in the back entrance and walked over beside me.  I was a bit wary  of  his intentions and that fact that he was a wild wolf. However he just wanted to be scratched and I spent some time rubbing and scratching his neck and back. His fur was very thick. He seemed fairly content. Then this part of the dream ended. Does this mean anything? Probably not.



Here is a link to  A Shamanism Animal Spirit Guide.  Curiously enough, possums and raccoons are on the same page along with spiders. I also have many spiders currently residing in my house since I tend to let them be if they are not in a bad spot (sorry ladies).

The pirate Edward Teach (i.e. Blackbeard) is probably the most famous historical pirate known to Americans. He was killed near Cape Hatteras in North Carolina on November 22, 1718. However it is not as well known that he had a younger brother, the not-quite-so-famous tutoring pirate Ted Teach, alias Blackboard. Blackboard was famous (or perhaps infamous) for boarding ships and forcing the passengers to submit to his lectures or walk the plank. Often the passengers, to escape from his thoughtful cogitation's on human nature and the universe, would give over all their money and worthwhile belongings and plead for release. Blackboard would comply if his "students" could pass certain tests to show that they had gotten something from his lectures. In this way, he became quite rich and spread learning throughout the Colonial world of the Caribbean. His ship, a fine Spanish galleon, was known as "Galileo's Revenge". Church officials were especially harangued and questioned on their real knowledge of the Bible and the meaning of Church doctrine. If they resisted learning or gave superficial responses, Blackboard would take their Bible, set it on his head and light it on fire, chanting "Remember Bruno, Remember Bruno!". Often that was all that was needed for the Church officials to admit that they really knew nothing and would henceforth work on "knowing themselves", a promise few of course kept, after escaping Blackboard's clutches.


For people interested in learning about a large variety of topics relevant to the state of our global civilization and its future check out the stimulating TED talks. TED stands for technology, entertainment and design. The talks (on video) are generally of very high quality and quite illuminating covering many topics ranging from science, architecture, religion, art, energy, urban issues, the environment, business, etc. A sample of some of the talks that I've found to be very interesting so far are Vilayanur Ramachandran discussing the brain, James Howard Kunstler on the lack of real viability in American suburban architecture, Alex Steffan on creating a sustainable global society and E. O. Wilson on exploring and preserving the biodiversity of Earth's life.

Seething...


Structure, flowings, curlings, swirlings,
intense and bright, soft and light
round about nature goes
amidst the swirling, curling, twirling
desire sits, a curve and fluctuation of “I am“,
watching, anxious, hesitant, confused
slave to conditioning, fear and suffering
occasional joy, a moment of beauty, a
cool breeze, a soft caress, and then awkwardness
and pain returns, slowness, heaviness, tiredness
a hot swirl of desire, a pang of grasping, a
sense of power, a distant vision, a longing
and a sense of sadness. On goes the twirling,
swirling, flowing through structures, circuits large and small, 
tiny, intricate, delicate beyond vision,...
vast and slow and thunderous,
seething with power,
uncomprehending,
a fly in a whirlwind, a forgotten stone passed over.
rushing to others to assuage one's fear
a need for love and giving,
great dreams,
imaginings arising,   suspended briefly,   then dissolving
amidst the twirling, swirling, curling
intense and bright, dim and shadowy.
space stretching away to infinity,
a shadowy ocean, currents flowing,
creatures vague and vast ago-ing, ago-ing
who knows where? Or whence they come
or where they go, passing by in the gloom.
Occasionally taking notice and then a
beatific vision or horrid struggle, or
simple joy or fear and pain, and then
the long night resumes....

     Ark  koala  instead but we gain no less
     fizzing phfft....Now! Charles pats rats cats
     sats acts on below the nifty caboose so
     long beheld we did indeed anon banana
     democracies demoted until trees spawn blue
     chrysolite and dark crimson crayons
     dream again and mentor classic translations
     behind 1729 dashes and dance, poetry and trance
     and then we begin in sonorous soliloquies
     to rasp rhapsodic melodies from
     parched throats and hearts heavy w/ the
     sorrow of cancelled sitcoms.



'Reveals' is perhaps a misleading term here, for not every text
displays its ideological categories on its surface: the visibility
of those categories depends on the text's precise modes of
working them, as well as on the nature of the categories themselves. 


'Form' itself turns out to be more an operative fiction, a product of
the interpreter's rage for order, than anything vested in the literary work
itself.



Thematic Number I



To read the New Critics with an eye to their founding metaphors is to discover, in de Man's terminology, a 'blindness' inseparable from their moments of greatest 'insight'. Their formalist notion of the poem as 'verbal icon' - a timeless, self-possessed structure of meaning - is shown to deconstruct its own claim through unrecognized twists of implication.



Thematic Number II



     Odes, Dorian modes and nematodes
     Tinkling poems arise with rhythm, rhyme and time
     Clouds coalesced in lyrical lines and sayings sublime
     On love lost, futures foreseen or how life is shitty 
     Or about a chickadee's ditty, so sweet and pretty
     Moving measures made of pain deferred
     Healing words when spoken and heard
     long after we're gone, how absurd!



Thematic Number III



There exists he argued, a complex and fascinating tension between the 'strong' poets in any tradition - those with a powerful drive to preserve their own identity - and the predecessor poets whose influence they have to cope with and somehow turn to advantage. The poet suffers with peculiar anguish that guilt ridden hatred of the father that Freud detected at the root of family relations. His will to expression is pursued through cunning forms of displacement or defensive 'tropes', which at the same time disguise and elaborate the will to be self-begotten, to acknowledge no previous authority or influence.



Thematic Number IV



The explanatory props of 'structure' are always available when thought tries to ignore the question of how its own regulative concepts are brought into play.



Thematic Number V


{extraneous comment: love the part in the video above where the Mach 5 bumps another car that  goes over the railing and blows up, mostly likely killing the driver instantly, while the theme song goes merrily on.}


Indeed the quest for crystalline order, sparkling as it is when illuminated by the numinous light of the higher mind, leads inevitably to that ......Argh! Polly wants a cracker!



Penultimate comments






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All quotes (in black) above are taken from "Deconstruction: Theory and Practice" by Christopher Norris copyright 1982.



Adieu, J.  Derrida!


The world is but a page upon which textologists scribe, writing tropes and counter-tropes that last well nigh forever, tales full of smoke and mirrors whose meanings deconstruct into nothing in particular.

Lions and Tigers and Ligers, Oh My! I love the moment in the video above when the tiger rubs up affectionately against the liger Simbad. I've seen my own cats do that many times with each other and with me. I've read that tigers, of all the large cats, are the most similar to house cats in their behavior. Would anyone like to keep a tiger for a pet? Certainly it would consume a lot of food and be dangerous if riled but I'm sure they could be as loving as a house cat. Although humans love cats, we can only coexist with the smallest of the cat species, since pound for pound, cats are a lot tougher than dogs. We will easily keep a 40 pound dog for a pet, but a 40 pound cat, say a bobcat or lynx? I don't think so.

THE TYGER (from Songs Of Experience)

By William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

1794

Would a lion and a tiger ever have interbred in the wild? The lions live in sub-Saharan Africa and the tigers in central and east Asia, so it seems that they would never have met in recent times. But in the past they must have migrated "out-of-Africa", so they were once linked together. Many people today don't realize that the range of the lion used to be much greater. Lions used to live in Egypt and the Middle East for example. Lions are mentioned in the Bible living in Palestine as in the story of  Samson who kills a lion bare-handed. The lion was also a royal symbol in Babylon and Mesopotamia but not India as far as I know. The range of lions did extend all the way to India and even Bangladesh and there are a few hundred native lions living on the Indian subcontinent today, so ligers might have been produced occasionally in ancient times. Lions also used to live in the countries bordering the Mediterranean sea. We don't tend think of lion's dwelling in Europe in the past. But they did.  According to the Wikipedia article on lions, lions even crossed over the Bering land bridge from Eurasia and got all the way down to Peru in South America!  In fact, it seems that the evolution and expansion of lions happened in the parallel with homo sapiens. Maybe we were exploiting the same prey animals. Or maybe cavemen kept lions as pets.



"Like Some Fierce Lion" ....the Lion in "The Iliad"

I was reminded of the extent to which lions used to roam when I read Homer's epic poem "The Iliad" several years ago. "The Iliad"  tells the tale of a short episode in the long ten year war fought between the Trojans and Greeks before 1000 BCE. It became clear to me that the real hero of the "The Iliad" was not Achilles or Hector or Ulysses or King Agammemnon but ... the lion. Homer loved to compare the Greek and Trojan heroes with lions, which he does 43 times in his epic. Perhaps his epic should be subtitled "The Leonid".  But then he had no ancient Greek heroes or gods of defunct religions or other cultural heroes to use metaphorically (or shouldn't that  be similically if that was the adverb form of simile?)  like we do today, so maybe he can be excused somewhat for being so leo-centric. The chain of literary comparisons had to start at some point and he was the first in the long Western literary tradition. According to Homer's descriptions, lions must have been a real problem in ancient Greece before they were wiped out by packs of wild humans and dogs. Below I extracted some of these references for the amusement and edification of the curious and added a few following comments.  

"The Iliad" is composed of 24 chapters or books. Note that there is not a single instance mentioned below of a lion attacking a human being in an unprovoked manner, just other animals or the goats and sheep of herders. The Greeks (known to Homer as Achaeans or Hellenes) are in blue, the Trojans and their allies in purple. And the real hero in bold maroon.  (BTW, Troy was generally called Ilium by Homer, hence "The Iliad": the poem about Ilium).
 
Book III
Menelaus saw him thus stride out before the ranks, and was glad as a hungry lion that lights on the carcase of some goat or horned stag, and devours it there and then, though dogs and youths set upon him.

Book V
He was like a lion that some mountain shepherd has wounded, but not killed, as he is springing over the wall of a sheep-yard to attack the sheep. The shepherd has roused the brute to fury but cannot defend his flock, so he takes shelter under cover of the buildings, while the sheep, panic-stricken on being deserted, are smothered in heaps one on top of the other, and the angry lion leaps out over the sheep-yard wall.

He sprang upon them as a lion fastens on the neck of some cow or heifer when the herd is feeding in a coppice.

He bestrode it as a lion in the pride of strength, with shield and on spear before him and a cry of battle on his lips resolute to kill the first that should dare face him.

As two lions whom their dam has reared in the depths of some mountain forest to plunder homesteads and carry off sheep and cattle till they get killed by the hand of man, so were these two vanquished by Aeneas, and fell like high pine-trees to the ground.

Book VIII
As a hound grips a wild boar or lion in flank or buttock when he gives him chase, and watches warily for his wheeling, even so did Hector follow close upon the Achaeans, ever killing the hindmost as they rushed panic-stricken onwards.

Book X
When they had done praying to the daughter of great Jove, they went their way like two lions prowling by night amid the armour and blood-stained bodies of them that had fallen.

As a lion springs furiously upon a flock of sheep or goats when he finds without their shepherd, so did the son of Tydeus set upon the Thracian soldiers till he had killed twelve.

Book XI
As a lion fastens on the fawns of a hind and crushes them in his great jaws, robbing them of their tender life while he on his way back to his lair- the hind can do nothing for them even though she be close by, for she is in an agony of fear, and flies through the thick forest, sweating, and at her utmost speed before the mighty monster- so, no man of the Trojans could help Isus and Antiphus, for they were themselves flying panic before the Argives.

Meanwhile the Trojans kept on flying over the middle of the plain like a herd cows maddened with fright when a lion has attacked them in the dead of night- he springs on one of them, seizes her neck in the grip of his strong teeth and then laps up her blood and gorges himself upon her entrails- even so did King Agamemnon son of Atreus pursue the foe, ever slaughtering the hindmost as they fled pell-mell before him.

With these words he put heart and soul into them all, and as a huntsman hounds his dogs on against a lion or wild boar, even so did Hector, peer of Mars, hound the proud Trojans on against the Achaeans.

The Trojans had gathered round Ulysses like ravenous mountain jackals round the carcase of some homed stag that has been hit with an arrow- the stag has fled at full speed so long as his blood was warm and his strength has lasted, but when the arrow has overcome him, the savage jackals devour him in the shady glades of the forest. Then heaven sends a fierce lion thither, whereon the jackals fly in terror and the lion robs them of their prey- even so did Trojans many and brave gather round crafty Ulysses, but the hero stood at bay and kept them off with his spear.

As peasants with their hounds chase a lion from their stockyard, and watch by night to prevent his carrying off the pick of their herd- he makes his greedy spring, but in vain, for the darts from many a strong hand fall thick around him, with burning brands that scare him for all his fury, and when morning comes he slinks foiled and angry away- even so did Ajax, sorely against his will, retreat angrily before the Trojans, fearing for the ships of the Achaeans.

Book XII
As a lion or wild boar turns fiercely on the dogs and men that attack him, while these form a solid wall and shower their javelins as they face him- his courage is all undaunted, but his high spirit will be the death of him; many a time does he charge at his pursuers to scatter them, and they fall back as often as he does so- even so did Hector go about among the host exhorting his men, and cheering them on to cross the trench.

Before him he held his shield of hammered bronze, that the smith had beaten so fair and round, and had lined with ox hides which he had made fast with rivets of gold all round the shield; this he held in front of him, and brandishing his two spears came on like some lion of the wilderness, who has been long famished for want of meat and will dare break even into a well-fenced homestead to try and get at the sheep. He may find the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks with dogs and spears, but he is in no mind to be driven from the fold till he has had a try for it; he will either spring on a sheep and carry it off, or be hit by a spear from strong hand- even so was Sarpedon fain to attack the wall and break down its battlements.

Book XIII
As two lions snatch a goat from the hounds that have it in their fangs, and bear it through thick brushwood high above the ground in their jaws, thus did the Ajaxes bear aloft the body of Imbrius, and strip it of its armour.

Book XV
As country peasants set their hounds on to a homed stag or wild goat- he has taken shelter under rock or thicket, and they cannot find him, but, lo, a bearded lion whom their shouts have roused stands in their path, and they are in no further humour for the chase- even so the Achaeans were still charging on in a body, using their swords and spears pointed at both ends, but when they saw Hector going about among his men they were afraid, and their hearts fell down into their feet.

Or as a savage lion attacking a herd of cows while they are feeding by thousands in the low-lying meadows by some wide-watered shore- the herdsman is at his wit's end how to protect his herd and keeps going about now in the van and now in the rear of his cattle, while the lion springs into the thick of them and fastens on a cow so that they all tremble for fear- even so were the Achaeans utterly panic-stricken by Hector and father Jove.

Book XVI
As when a lion springs with a bound upon a herd of cattle and fastens on a great black bull which dies bellowing in its clutches- even so did the leader of the Lycian warriors struggle in death as he fell by the hand of Patroclus.

As he spoke he flung himself on Cebriones with the spring, as it were, of a lion that while attacking a stockyard is himself struck in the chest, and his courage is his own bane- even so furiously, O Patroclus, did you then spring upon Cebriones.

As two lions fight fiercely on some high mountain over the body of a stag that they have killed, even so did these two mighty warriors, Patroclus son of Menoetius and brave Hector, hack and hew at one another over the corpse of Cebriones.

As when a lion has fought some fierce wild-boar and worsted him- the two fight furiously upon the mountains over some little fountain at which they would both drink, and the lion has beaten the boar till he can hardly breathe- even so did Hector son of Priam take the life of the brave son of Menoetius who had killed so many, striking him from close at hand, and vaunting over him the while.

Book XVII
Or as some fierce lion upon the mountains in the pride of his strength fastens on the finest heifer in a herd as it is feeding- first he breaks her neck with his strong jaws, and then gorges on her blood and entrails; dogs and shepherds raise a hue and cry against him, but they stand aloof and will not come close to him, for they are pale with fear- even so no one had the courage to face valiant Menelaus.

While he was thus in two minds, the Trojans came up to him with Hector at their head; he therefore drew back and left the body, turning about like some bearded lion who is being chased by dogs and men from a stockyard with spears and hue and cry, whereon he is daunted and slinks sulkily off- even so did Menelaus son of Atreus turn and leave the body of Patroclus.

But Ajax came up with his shield like wall before him, on which Hector withdrew under shelter of his men, and sprang on to his chariot, giving the armour over to the Trojans to take to the city, as a great trophy for himself; Ajax, therefore, covered the body of Patroclus with his broad shield and bestrode him; as a lion stands over his whelps if hunters have come upon him in a forest when he is with his little ones- in the pride and fierceness of his strength he draws his knit brows down till they cover his eyes- even so did Ajax bestride the body of Patroclus, and by his side stood Menelaus son of Atreus, nursing great sorrow in his heart.

As he spoke he took the blood-stained spoils and laid them upon his chariot; then he mounted the car with his hands and feet all steeped in gore as a lion that has been gorging upon a bull.

Menelaus heeded his words and went his way as a lion from a stockyard- the lion is tired of attacking the men and hounds, who keep watch the whole night through and will not let him feast on the fat of their herd. In his lust of meat he makes straight at them but in vain, for darts from strong hands assail him, and burning brands which daunt him for all his hunger, so in the morning he slinks sulkily away- even so did Menelaus sorely against his will leave Patroclus, in great fear lest the Achaeans should be driven back in rout and let him fall into the hands of the foe.

Book XVIII
As upland shepherds that cannot chase some famished lion from a carcase, even so could not the two Ajaxes scare Hector son of Priam from the body of Patroclus.

He laid his murderous hands upon the breast of his comrade, groaning again and again as a bearded lion when a man who was chasing deer has robbed him of his young in some dense forest; when the lion comes back he is furious, and searches dingle and dell to track the hunter if he can find him, for he is mad with rage- even so with many a sigh did Achilles speak among the Myrmidons saying, "Alas! vain were the words with which I cheered the hero Menoetius in his own house; I said that I would bring his brave son back again to Opoeis after he had sacked Ilius and taken his share of the spoils- but Jove does not give all men their heart's desire.

*He wrought also a herd of homed cattle. He made the cows of gold and tin, and they lowed as they came full speed out of the yards to go and feed among the waving reeds that grow by the banks of the river. Along with the cattle there went four shepherds, all of them in gold, and their nine fleet dogs went with them. Two terrible lions had fastened on a bellowing bull that was with the foremost cows, and bellow as he might they haled him, while the dogs and men gave chase: the lions tore through the bull's thick hide and were gorging on his blood and bowels, but the herdsmen were afraid to do anything, and only hounded on their dogs; the dogs dared not fasten on the lions but stood by barking and keeping out of harm's way.

Book XX
The son of Peleus from the other side sprang forth to meet him, like some fierce lion that the whole country-side has met to hunt and kill- at first he bodes no ill, but when some daring youth has struck him with a spear, he crouches open mouthed, his jaws foam, he roars with fury, he lashes his tail from side to side about his ribs and loins, and glares as he springs straight before him, to find out whether he is to slay, or be slain among the foremost of his foes- even with such fury did Achilles burn to spring upon Aeneas.




One would never guess from Homer's description that lion's are pack hunters as we know the lions are today in sub-Saharan Africa. The Grecian lion's seem to be solitary hunters like all other known cat species. Maybe that's because the lions lived in mountainous and forested regions that made solitary hunting the best means of survival. Our popular modern image of lions, such as portrayed in Disney's movie "The Lion King",  comes from the numerous videos that have been shown on nature documentaries over the years. These featured the prides of  lions prowling the Serengeti and other areas of east Africa. In the conditions prevailing in the relatively open grasslands of the Serengeti and the African bush one can understand why lions band together in packs. The large prey animals stick together in herds for the most part to provide mutual protection against numerous predators including wild dogs and hyenas in addition to lions. When hunting together in packs even large animals many times the size of lions, like giraffes, can be successfully hunted. Now some solitary predators such as cheetahs and leopards are successful under these conditions. The cheetahs rely on their awesome speed to kill running animals. But the prey killed by other predators is just as good as prey one had killed oneself and without the hassle of the kill. A pack of predators can drive off a lone predator and take its kill. This often happens, especially in the case of cheetah's who lose many of their kills to other predators such as lions or hyenas. It's easier for them to run away and then kill again. Leopards are strong and agile enough that they can often haul their kills up into trees for safety and to eat at their leisure.  The predators that have to stick to the ground and are not so agile or fast have to band together in packs to make hunting easier and to protect themselves from packs of other predators.

The banding together of predators has created a kind of evolutionary arms race between them. The smallest predators, the wild dogs, will attack and kill lone hyena's if they get the chance. Likewise, a pack of hyena's will take down a lone lion if they get the chance. The lions, under these conditions, have little choice but to band together as well for their own protection and in turn will do their share of attacking competing predators. Often these fights have nothing to do with fighting over a kill but are struggles for dominance and territory. We human beings have certainly emulated these patterns over the long rise
to our current state of civilization, and have done so in a much more deadly and effective fashion. Now hopefully we will develop the wisdom to be able to coexist with each other and the other species on this planet in a sustainable and harmonious manner as the primal threats from our early days have receded. We've won, so can't we relax a bit now and enjoy this planet?






 -----------------------------
 Blog entry number 40.

You're Godel, Escher, Bach!

by Douglas Hofstadter

Despite being interested in things like mathematical theory and the
secret lives of numbers, you're actually quite popular. You carry on great dialogues, though you keep asking people about their heel. When faced with a flight of stairs, you always have great difficulty knowing where you'll end up, and have been known to consult a calculator. Despite these oddities, what you say is relevant to the future. Though the day Deep Blue beat Kasparov, you sure were surprised!

Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

I started reading GEB in high school but never finished it. Maybe I'll have to now. It had a lot of interesting mind-opening discussions, although I know that I don't agree with one of Hofstader's main premises: i.e. that the mind is the "software" that is run on the hardware of the brain like a computer program is run on a computer. Artificial Intelligence is one of those fields that used to make glowing promises of fantastic advancements just around the corner. But, like controlled fusion (which is always going to be achieved in less than 20 years), they've never materialized.

 The book quiz is kind of neat and in many of the answers I could go either way. I tried it again with different answers and got several different books, some of which I'd never heard of before, that could represent different aspects of my personality and interests. When I tried giving answers that I definitely did NOT like, the book that resulted was Charles Dickens "Great Expectations", a boring book that I despise and had to read in my 9th grade English class.  So maybe there's something to this?

BTW, I was reading an article in one of my alumni magazines about a computer science professor who happens to be one year younger than me. Usually I look at these magazines briefly and toss them into the garbage, but I didn't this time. The professor is working on various computer programs to improve the way the Internet is used. In an attempt show how special this dude is, the article mentioned that he was the first person to get a computer science degree at Harvard .... in 1986. That really surprised me since I went to an engineering/science school in which computer science was the most popular degree among the non-engineering students. And I graduated one year before the featured professor did. I hadn't realized that Harvard was so behind the times back then, not what one would expect from one of America's "top" schools! The article mentioned that the reason Harvard had waited so long before offering a computer science degree was that the faculty had expected computer science to be a passing fad. 

 

I discovered a fine rendering of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor on YouTube with computer animation illustrating the structure of the music. It was very helpful and fascinating to me since I am not very musically talented.

 

What will be the long term effect of the Internet on global society? The Internet is less than two decades old and has been the next real great leap in communication and knowledge dissemination. It is a true revolution whose effects are unfolding in the present time. With the Internet, anyone with access to a computer can put out their own writings, thoughts and creative productions and make them immediately available to a world-wide audience. Some of the previous technological leaps in communication in the last two centuries were the development of the telegraph and then the telephone. These allowed individuals to communicate with each other world-wide but only orally or in single short written statements. The development of radio and then television allowed mass dissemination of communications but these were produced by professionals and so were not really available to the common person. Nor was much feedback between the communicating parties possible. So the appearance of the Internet represents a true democratization in communication. How dramatically will it change global culture, social norms and the economy among other things?

My personal musings on the possible interesting effects of the Internet on global society will be discussed in another essay (maybe). But before really contemplating that in any detail, I became curious about the historical development of printing. The appearance of printing started the first global revolution in communication. Specifically, the development of the movable type printing press, which is arguably the most important single invention ever conceived. The Internet can be roughly characterized as giving each person with computer access their own personal printing press although with hyperlinking and multimedia capabilites. So here are some notes I've compiled on the historical development of writing and printing, mainly for my own use, but perhaps they might be interesting to others too.

Notes on the development of Writing and Printing

Prior to the invention of writing, all knowledge had to be remembered and stored in people's memories for oral recitation. Almost all knowledge was transmitted orally, or symbolically in dances and rituals or in the few artifacts and depictions that could be constructed. What was stored depended on people's ability to remember information correctly and in abundance. Dances, rituals and symbolic items could and were used as mnemonic devices. But in spite of that, the total knowledge that could be known by any one person was the equivalent of a few modern day books. And to store that required a prodigious development and use of memory in learning rites and rituals and items for oral recitation. Developing such strong memories was a good thing but, on the other hand, the mental energy devoted to memorization took away from focusing on any sort of complexity in analysis or the ability to be abundantly creative. Songs, poems, stories, histories, accounts of events, etc. could be composed and recited extemporaneously, so much creativity was possible, but those creations often were lost because they were not remembered and hence could not exert much influence on future generations. Likewise, any significant development of mathematics had to await the use of writing. In the absence of writing to hold ideas, developing complex and detailed analysis or calculations with respect to any subject seems to be a difficult task for the unaided human mind. In the long millenia in which oral cultures dominated, each generation had to start from scratch in many areas or simply stick to what could be remembered and orally recounted. The constraints of memorization thus limited to a great extent the complexity that human cultures could achieve. The development of reading and writing were the first great innovations that really differentiated humans from all other animal species, even those as exceptional as cats. Now the age of the Internet, computers and hand-held electronics has further accelerated this trend of freeing up the need to directly memorize items but this may be too much of a good thing.

The earliest written languages were developed in Sumer and Egypt around 3000 BCE. The Sumerians wrote by using reeds to make impressions on wet clay tablets that could then be baked to a hard form and preserved. The set of wedge-like characters the early Sumerians used is called cuneiform. Originally more pictorial, cuneiform developed into a more practical abstract set of characters that could more easily be made using the triangular cross sections of reeds found on the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Many early languages were written in cuneiform scripts over the centuries including early Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian, Aramaic, etc.

The Egyptians developed a hieroglyphic language that used symbolic pictograms to represent words and concepts, and to some extent sounds. The Egyptians stuck with their complex hieroglyphics for millenia. Although they did develop some simpler forms of hieroglyphics, the use of written language was mainly restricted to specially trained scribes. Thus the use of written language always remained the province of an elite class of society and so the benefits of wide-spread literacy were never experienced. Egyptian society remained relatively tradition bound with few real changes over 3000 years. 



The Egyptians developed papyrus sheets to use for writing by taking the reeds from the papyrus plant that grew along the Nile river and laying the reeds together in a grid pattern and then pounding them together. This made for good, flat durable surfaces on which to write but the papyrus sheets were too brittle to fold. Hence they were made into long sheets that were rolled together as scrolls. Scrolls were the earliest books but they had to be read by rolling and unrolling them together a bit at a time. Thus it was not very convenient to access any given portion of a long writing, so memorization was still a very important quality to foster. In addition, the ink on the papyrus sheets tended to get worn away if much rolling and unrolling was required. Our word for paper comes from papyrus and the word for book, biblio (as in The Bible) comes from the name of the  Phoenician city of Byblos on the Lebanese coast that was a major trade center in Egyptian papyrus for many centuries.

The practical, business oriented, sea-faring Phoenicians developed the first phonetic alphabet, which was a great improvement on the hieroglyphic writing system of the Egyptians or of Mesopotamian cuneiform. A small set of easily written characters was used to represent the different sounds composing their spoken language. Putting the characters together created the words in their language, something we are all familiar with today. Only a few simple characters needed to be learned. All different types of sounds could be represented rather than using complex symbols or a small set of symbols to represent individual concepts. But people had to learn how to spell and know what the words mean. One could thus learn to pronounce words written in a foreign language even if you didn't know what the word meant. The Greeks learned how to read and write from the Phoenicians and then the Romans from the Greeks. All phonetic alphabets in the world, including Greek, Roman, Cyrillic, Sanskrit, Hebrew, Arabic, Cherokee, etc. trace their origin back to the original Phoenician alphabet.

The next innovation in recording occurred with the development of parchment or vellum. This happened, according to tradition, because the Hellenistic king Eumenus II (197-159 BCE), wanted to make his kingdom of Pergamum in Asia Minor a center of Greek culture. When his rival Ptolemy VI, king of Egypt, who possessed the great library of Alexandria, cut off the supply of papyrus to try and prevent that, King Eumenus devised a technique of cleaning, stretching and smoothing the skins of sheep and goats to create a durable, flexible writing surface that could be written on both sides.

The development of parchment allowed sheets to be bound together into a codex or book, apparently first invented by Christians in the Roman empire. The book allowed for easy access to any portion of a writing or a group of writings and hence was a big advantage over the cumbersome scrolls. However, parchment was expensive since it took the skins of twelve sheep to create a quarto book of 200 pages. Hence the parchment was often more valuable than the writing on it! So the books that were saved and copied had to be very important works that were worth the effort of recording and preserving. 

Paper was invented in China about 105 ACE when Ts'ai Lun, using mulberry, waste fish nets, and rags made the first known paper for the emperor. The Chinese kept paper making a state secret as they did with silk making. The Arabs picked up the art of making paper from Chinese prisoners of war captured in the silk road city of Samarkand in the eighth century ACE. By 800 ACE, the brilliant caliph Harun al-Rashid of Arabian Nights fame was making paper in Baghdad. By 1150 ACE there was a paper making industry in Moorish Spain. Through the Arabs, paper making was transmitted to the Byzantine Empire and across the Mediterranean to Spain from whence it spread to Europe.

Books and scrolls were written and copied by hand for centuries, mainly by scribes for nobles and kings or by monks in the scriptorum of monasteries. Beautifully written and illustrated books were created in this manner but the number of copies was alway very limited. The laborious hand copying of manuscripts was one of the main duties of monks in the Middle Ages.

Block printing was developed into an art in China during the T'ang dynasty (618-907), although printing from wooden or stone carved blocks had been known for centuries. The goal of Chinese printing was to preserve the authenticity of texts by preventing copying errors. Because the Chinese language used ideograms, rather than letters, each carved block represented a single word or an entire page, but once made many copies of texts could be produced. To carve the blocks for the Confucian classics took 21 years in Sung dynasty China. In 953 ACE the emperor was presented with a complete printed version of the 130 volumes of the Confucian classics. Buddhist monks were very active in developing printing to preserve and copy their numerous texts as well. By 983 ACE they had produced the entire 5,048 volume set of the Tripitaka, totally 130,000 pages! Each page was printed from an individually carved block. Block printing was imported to Europe from China in the early middle ages.

Although the Chinese, Japanese and the Koreans were fully proficient in the art of block printing they never developed the means to mass produce cheap copies of many books. Clearly this was not due to a lack of ingenuity or technology on their part but because their written language was ideographic like Egyptian hieroglyphics. The use of a vast ideographic character set (there are over 2000 characters in the minimal set that one needs to learn) requires a prodigious amount of memorization in order to read and write with such a system. And it does not lend itself to easy reproductions through printing since each block character or page has to be laboriously produced and then the blocks are not easy to rearrange quickly. Nor is it easy to look up the character for a given word one has forgotten or doesn't know because there is not a simple system by which the characters can be ordered. It would be very hard to print a daily newspaper under such restrictions! When I was in Japan, the Japanese people I knew often used a Japanese-English dictionary to look up the English word so they could find the equivalent Japanese word and then the right Chinese character to write the word! On the other hand, the use of Chinese characters does not require that one actually learn to speak the Chinese language. Any language, including English, can be represented by the same set of characters. So in the Orient people who cannot speak each other's language can still communicate with each other via writing, even though they don't know how a given character is pronounced in the other's language. This is in contrast to the use of a phonetic alphabet in which different language users using the same character set can learn how to pronounce a word written in the other's language even though they don't know its meaning.  

Books did not begin to be mass produced until the development of printing with movable type by the goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1394 - 1468). He solved the problem of developing molds for cheaply producing many uniform dies for individual letters and for binding the dies together into a single piece that could be used to print a page. The use of interchangeable parts for printing allowed the creation of many different books simply by rearranging the dies for the pages of each book. Hence with a relatively small number of dies and a printing press, one could print many different books. The first book printed with movable type is the famous Gutenberg Bible in 1448. The first scientific work to be printed was Pliny's Natural History in Venice in 1469.

The first printed books were made to look similar to hand written manuscripts and hence were very beautiful and of high quality. This was because the hand written manuscripts were what people considered to be real books for centuries. It took almost century before the idea of what was "a book" to change from ornate hand written manuscripts to the much cheaper and more widely available printed versions.

The idea of printing spread rapidly across Europe. By 1500 about 40,000 editions of books existed and 20 million books. Printing presses had been set up in Venice in 1469, in Florence, Naples and Paris in 1471, Cracow in 1474 and Spain in 1475.

The first books printed in English were Recuyell of the Historyes of Troy in 1475 and The Game and Playe of Chess in 1476 by William Caxton (1422-1491) in the Dutch city of Bruges. He had learned about the art of printing on a visit to Cologne from Bruges. On returning to London he set up a printing press and printed some 100 titles over the next fifteen years including the encyclopedic Mirrour of the Worlde in 1481, the first illustrated book printed in English.

The first modern publishing house was the Aldine Press founded in Venice by scholar-printer Aldus Manutius (1450-1515). The Aldine Press pioneered the production of the first smaller portable books, designated "Octavo" because the size was determined by folding a printers sheet into eight portions that made a page about six by nine inches in size. Aldus Manutius also invented the italic typeface. The first books found with sequential page numbers were printed by the Aldine Press in 1499. The use of page numbering allowed the insertion of a table of contents and an index, both of which made books much more useful.

Printing with movable type created a true revolution in communication and education that had global ramifications. One of the first effects caused by widespread printing was the standardization of languages. Printers had to decide the spellings of words and which dialects to use. When Martin Luther translated the Bible into German he chose the High German dialect used by the chanceries in Saxony. This became the norm for the modern German language. Printing the translated Bible insured its survival and prevented its suppression by the Catholic Church. The Protestants made great use of the printing press to spread their literature. The Catholics, and later many other institutions, discovered that once a book was printed and circulated it could not be withdrawn or suppressed. Without printing, the Catholic church, in all probability, would have been able to end the Protestant Reformation as they had stopped many counter movements in centuries past. So printing had the immediate effect of insuring that the survival of the Protestant Reformation as it would many later movements and caused the standardization of German, and soon other, European languages.
Thus the widespread circulation of books released suppressed passions that caused many socially disruptive effects (not necessarily a bad thing) and at the same time had a homogenizing effect on societies and cultures as well.

Other well known effects were the creation of mass literacy and hence a mass audience for writings that greatly stimulated the production of more writings and hence more reason and need to learn to read, etc., etc.  That has certainly made the world a more interesting, volatile and arguably better place in the last several centuries.



Thinking about the development of the writing and printing made me realize that in the last two centuries, the evolution of the modern book has been recapitulated to a degree in the evolution of audio and visual recording technology. Audio recordings were first engraved on wax cylinders in the days of Thomas Edison and then later vinyl discs, better known as records. Sometime in the middle of the 20th century scroll-like magnetic tapes (i.e. reel-to-reel tapes and later cassettes) were developed. These possessed the same weaknesses as scrolls in that they had to be read serially and tended to wear out if played too often. And finally durable compact discs (CDs) were developed which could be randomly accessed like books. Similarly in the visual recording field, cumbersome photographic plates were first developed, followed by moving picture film. Records stored on microfilm reels, as my thesis is somewhere, are read almost the same way that scrolls must have been. Magnetic tapes followed later with VHS tapes becoming popular for less than  two decades. Now magnetic tapes are being superseded by Digital Video Discs (DVDs) that can be randomly accessed and possess tables of contents. 

The development of new audio and visual technologies and formats is preceding so rapidly now that one wonders whether this is a blessing or a curse. Materials produced with one format or technology are superseded in only a matter of years by new formats and technologies and much work is often lost because the older stuff can't be transferred easily or isn't worth the effort as I, and many others, have learned from personal experience. We can read books that are 500 years old but will anyone be able to read a CD or DVD, or this blog entry for that matter, 500 years from now? The printed book will probably be with us for a long time to come.


Note that blogs are often set up in a scroll format these days. Will that evolve as well?




The source for many of these notes is Daniel Boorstin's book "The Discoverers", copyrighted 1983.
 

Hula hoop girl
So smooth and subtle in movement
Calm at the center of your shaking ring
Flowing like a snake shedding its skin
as the hoop moves up and down
Up and down
On the legs, on the hips
Hands slightly pointed outwards, elbow raised a little
On the shoulders, on the neck, on the head
The hand naturally absorbs the flow
Now one hand, now the other
Then back again
Vibrating at the center of the helical flow
In total control
Mistress of her hoop
Slight and slim in build
Perfectly proportioned
Short brown hair
Beautiful features
Open and calm face
Sensible and laughing
Experimental in movement
What a special treat to see your Zen-like display
of hula hooping harmony!


Dedicated to the amazing young woman at the Acoustic Cafe
May 26, 2007 who hula-hooped for hours next to us and, as far as
I could tell, never made a single mistake. Her sister was very skilled
as well.



The beautiful and serene video display of hooping is from Burning Man 2006, an event I attended. Burning Man is held every year on a dry lake bed in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, shown in the picture above. I included the pix just because I think it is beautiful.

4. At the start of this dream I was standing at the edge of an iron fence with elaborate working, very Victorian. There were many seats and little tables placed intermittently along the iron fence. I had the impression that I was dressed in Victorian style white clothing with one of those British "safari" hats from the 19th century. I looked left along the iron fence and it stretched away perfectly linearly as far as the eye could see, never ending. The area that I was on seemed to be a raised veranda of a great fancy hotel or even an ocean liner. I could almost sense the past presence of British type people with the ladies in fancy white dresses and white outfits for the men. The unending length and straightness of the fence jolted me and then I realized I was dreaming. Looking out over the iron railing from the portico area of the hotel, I could see a busy African type savannah stretching away below me. Since I realized I was dreaming and seemed to be all alone, I decided to enter the countryside. As I floated downwards I could see my hands stretched out in front of me. I decided to try and stabilize the dream by focusing on my hands. However as I did that my hands kept shifting around and assumed all kinds of different shapes (but still recognizable as hands). More fingers were added and then subtracted. The hands became distinctly reptilian at one point. The hands did briefly stabilize but by then I was down in the countryside. I looked around at the bushes and scrubby trees nearby and saw some kind of grazing animals there. However they didn't seem like ordinary animals. I could sense their intelligence. They noticed me looking at them and then they started to come after me with a kind of bounding gait, almost two legged like predatory dinosaurs might have made or maybe kangaroos (it is possible that this was some type of Australian landscape instead of African). I decided it was best to flee before they could get close to me so I took off to my right and moved toward a large clump of bushes at top speed. Then as I was moving away and making some progress in distancing myself from them, as well as feeling some sense of panic, I woke up. The sense that "the animals" were real living intelligent beings was quite strong, very different from the shadowy presences of most characters or people that I encounter in ordinary dreams.

The above is a dream account of a "lucid dream" I had a few years ago. The dream was nice because it was a single contained episode without any prior or post sequences. One idea I have about some aspects of dreaming, and this only refers to a few kinds of dreams or dream states amidst the complex variety of possible dreams, is that they sometimes involve "out-of-body" experiences that occur within one's own body. In other words, our attention moves around inside our body looking at different aspects of our body from vantage points that don't occur during our waking state when our attention can only see ourselves from a small number of closely related viewpoints clustered in the head-neck region. In an inner "out-of-body" experience our attention can travel around inside our body seeing things much more closely or from unusual vantage viewpoints. This can create some dream "archetypes" that recur in many dreams since we are seeing the same bodily parts over and over again but in perhaps slightly different ways. Since our internal anatomy is basically the same from person to person, we share a common inner landscape and hence similar archetypes for these kinds of dreams. The dreaming mind will naturally translate whatever we are viewing into some kind of image that we can relate to in our waking state and hence we don't recognize that we are seeing the inside of our own body. These bodily image "archetypes" will normally form the background or landscape in which a dream is set rather than being the primary foreground content.

As an example, I have had many dreams over time that involve seeing a long winding road or a set of railway tracks or a long wall or a long tunnel, etc. as in the dream account above. I interpret those images as views of my spinal column. Only rarely does one view directly along the spinal column since that is a very specific vantage point and one that is hard to maintain in a stable manner because our attention does like to wander so much. But that rarity may be the reason it gave me a shock in the dream above. In the hypnopompic state lying between dreaming and full awakening, which I often try to maintain for as long as I can, I have some degree of control over where I can move my attention or what I can do with it, and in that state I have sometimes seen that long tunnel directly.

In a more speculative vein, this specific archetype may be related to the famous image of Jacob's Ladder reported in the 28th chapter of Genesis in the Bible. The following is from the New International Version translation.

Jacob's Dream at Bethel

 10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."

 16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." 17 He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."

 18 Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. 19 He called that place Bethel, though the city used to be called Luz.

 20 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, "If God will be with me and will watch over me on this journey I am taking and will give me food to eat and clothes to wear 21 so that I return safely to my father's house, then the LORD will be my God 22 and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God's house, and of all that you give me I will give you a tenth."

In this case, Jacob may have been viewing his spinal column in such a way that he was looking outwards through the top of his head. Perhaps a stone was not the most comfortable pillow! But it would have helped focus his attention. That would be along and outwards through the crown chakra in more mystical language and hence would connect to the greater spiritual reality.

The image at the top of the blog is a digital camera picture of an "infinity box" that I constructed from a set of parallel mirrors.



This is blog entry number 36.

I made a simpler and complete version of the fractal binary tree diagram shown in my previous blog. The binary tree in the diagram above (click on it for enlargement) goes down 12 levels or branchs for the most part, with a few places where there are 13 branchs when I got a bit carried away with my pen. That means that there are 2 to the power of 11 or 2,048 nodes at the smallest level in the diagram (a node being the tip of  the very smallest branchs or where there is a splitting into two paths). It's fun to think about this in terms of genealogy and one's line of descent. The diagram can represent 11 generations of one's ancestors (not counting one self as a generation).  So 11 generations ago, one is descended from, at most, 2,048 unique people. One can see on the diagram above that that is already an impressive number of people who, for the average white American, would tend to have been scattered all over Europe and elsewhere, depending on when one's forebears immigrated to this country.

Since the number of one's ancestors doubles with each generation, the number of one's ancestors quickly becomes very large the further back one goes. For example, going back 30 generations, which takes one to about the year 1000 ACE when the Vikings under Leif Ericson were trying to settle in North America, one would have about 1 billion 30th generation ancestors assuming that each ancestor is unique. However, that number already exceeds the current population of Europe, let alone the population of Europe in 1000 ACE. Going back just three more generations, one would have 8 billion ancestors, which exceeds the current world population. This tells us that most of our ancestors beyond a certain point are not unique, but that we are descended through multiple lines of descent from the same parents in many cases. So we have brothers and sisters whose progeny intermarried. This is not really news to most people I'm sure. There must have been a lot of kissing cousins in the past who did more than just kiss. We can see this situation described in the Biblical book of Genesis, where Abraham marries his half-sister Sarah. And then Abraham's son Isaac marries his 2nd cousin Rebekah and Isaac's son Jacob marries both his 1st cousins, Leah and Rachel. But one would expect these kinds of marriages between near relatives in the past when populations were small and travel was difficult.

As a side note one might consider the total number of human beings that have ever lived. I've heard that some people are worried that the current population is so large that we will soon start running out of space to bury our dead. How big a cemetery would be needed for every person that's ever lived? Given the current world population of 6 billion plus and the fact that more people are alive today than ever before we can put a reasonable upper limit on the total human population over time. The population has risen exponentially in the last century as advances in food production and medicine have allowed more children than ever before to survive childhood.  But before the last two centuries the population grew only very slowly and was relatively steady back to the time of the rise of agriculture when there was a jump in the total population from the days when hunting and gathering were the normal means of subsistence. Going back about 1 million years or so and giving 20 years per generation that comes to 50,000 generations. If the world population held steady at a few million people during most of this time that comes to around 100 billion people. So if we set a generous upper limit of 1 trillion people we can ask how much space we would occupy if we were all buried in one big cemetery. If we gave each person 1 square meter then the total population of 1 trillion could be buried in a large square that is 610 miles on a side, which is a bit smaller than the size of Texas and New Mexico combined. For the smaller estimate of 100 billion, that comes to an area near the size of Tennessee. One might consider that size when paleontologists search for the bones of our human and near human ancestors. Even if all the bones of the human population stayed intact, which is highly unlikely, they would still occupy only a small part of the Earth's total land area. Given that, it isn't very surprising that finding fossil remains of humans or our near human predecessors, is a very difficult task.  A related fact I've heard at one point is that the total number of bones found so far for Cro-Magnon man and our earlier pre-human ancestors, including divergent lines like the Neanderthals to whom we probably are not related at all, would not fill up one ordinary size room!

Getting back to the binary tree diagram above, one might consider how much of our genetic material comes from each individual twelve generations ago. If all our ancestors were unique and each generation received half of their total genetic material from each parent, then only one part in 4,096 of our genetic material would come from any given individual that far back in time. That would mean that any particular one of your ancestors would make only a very small contribution to your total genetic make up from that long ago. However, genetics doesn't work by a simple halving of material with each generation. Our total genetic material is divided up into 23 chromosome pairs. In normal reproduction, we receive 23 chromosomes from our mother and 23 from our father. That means the chromosomes are transmitted intact as discrete units. Assuming that there is no mixing between chromosomes in the sex cells of a person before they reproduce, we have received our 46 chromosomes from, at most, 46 unique people in the past. In other words, in any given generation there are, at most, only 46 people to whom we are actually related. So the vast majority of our ancestors have given us no genetic material at all! Hence we are in reality not even related, genetically speaking, to most of our ancestors.

I'm no expert in genetics but I'm pretty sure that some genetic swapping does occur between chromosomes in all the jostling that goes about in our cells so the number of our real genetic ancestors is probably somewhat larger than 46, but how much larger I'm not sure. In addition there will be genetic mutations that will modify the chromosomes as well as additions and deletions of material from viral infections. For example, the AIDS virus, HIV, cannot be eliminated from an infected person because the virus actually splices its DNA directly into the human genome. If the infected cells happen to be sex cells then those cells would carry the viral DNA with them if they were involved in reproduction. It seems that much of our DNA, most of which is considered "junk DNA", might carry a significant percentage of DNA from past viral infections. The previous link is actually to an animation of the T4 virus (rendered here in an artistic painting) infecting a bacteria rather than a human cell but its fun to watch.

Now one might consider how many unique chromosomes there actually are in the total world population right now. If we went back to a time when the world population was only one million, for example, and each individual had a fully unique set of chromosomes, then there would be only 46 million unique chromosomes. However even at that time there must have been a lot of mixing of the human population so the total number of unique chromosomes has to be very much smaller. As a wild guess, I might estimate that there was probably more likely around a few tens of thousands of unique chromosomes. Genetic mutations and genetic swapping of material since that time would raise the number of unique chromosomes, but maybe not significantly. The increase in genetic diversity  would be offset to some extent by the extinction of genetically unique populations, as probably happened from time to time through wars, disease, starvation and the general hardships of life. So perhaps there are only about 100,000 unique chromosomes distributed amongst the current world population of roughly 6.7 billion people. It would be very interesting find out what the number really is. I'm sure there will be a good estimates for this in the coming decades when much of the world's population has been genetically typed. It would show how closely related to each other we really are. The limited number of unique chromosomes might explain why so many people look like each other and the fact that that number of facial types really doesn't seem to be all that large.

Just out of curiosity I looked up the chromosomal composition of a few other species. Cats have 19 pairs of chromosomes and dogs have 39 pairs. Maybe the fewer number of cat chromosomes makes them a bit more resistant to genetic change and that might be one reason it seems easier to breed different types of dogs than cats. But probably that's not really a major factor. How chromosomes have evolved over time must be an interesting study. How are they added or deleted to any given species? Our nearest relatives, the great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans), all have 24 pairs of chromosomes, one extra pair than humans. But it turns out that human chromosome number 2 is actually a fusion of two of the great ape chromosomes (which have been dubbed numbers 2A and 2B in them). Other than that difference, the chromosomes of humans and the other great apes are very similar. Chimpanzees and humans diverged from their common ancestor about 6 million years ago. Something happened to cause our ancestors to split into two groups who went their separate ways back then, but what?

Another illustration of the binary tree and the effects of binary exponential growth occurs with the polymerase chain reaction or PCR.  PCR is a technique invented by molecular biologists to produce millions of copies of a segment of DNA that can then be easily analyzed. The PCR technique is critical in many applications such DNA finger printing, the sequencing of the genome of various species and even partial decoding of species now extinct. The PCR technique is explained in this video. One can see that the  human created technique is much simpler than the way DNA actually replicates itself in cells. Also take a look at this other cool DNA replication video.

Getting back to the binary tree diagram above, one can create larger binary trees simply by taking that base diagram above and combining it with another copy to create a larger triangle twice the original size. The total number of nodes would, of course, double. Then one could combine those triangles to create another larger triangle twice that size with four times the area of the original, etc. To make a binary tree with 2 to the 30th power or just over one billion nodes, would require over 524,000 of the binary tree images pasted together, a daunting task to create! Note that the binary tree image actually has 2,048 total nodes but the very last step contains 1,024 of them. In another scheme one could tile the plane with square versions. That might make for some nice looking wall paper or kitchen floors, especially with more artistic versions of the diagram. Feel free to use the diagram above for your own purposes if you so desire.

The image above is a binary tree represented in a fractal form. The image can be enlarged several times by clicking on it for closer inspection. Starting at the root of the tree ( the red drop at the downward point of the triangle ), and moving upwards, each branch terminates by splitting into two more branchs that veer off at 45 degree angles. Each new branch is half the length of the branch that is two steps behind it. Thus all the vertical and horizontal branchs form a series in which the branchs successively halve in size, as does the set of diagonal branchs. It is quite easy to see why the halving occurs, as these two series of branchs are each part of a descending series of boxes in which the next box in the series is one quarter the area of the previous box. So if one follows a single thread of the tree, say by always turning to the right at each juncture, the thread will spiral in on itself with the odd and even branchs each halving in size ad infinitum. The total length of the thread will be finite, however, even though it is composed of an infinite number of branchs. For example, if the initial length of the first branch in the picture above (from the red drop to the top of the tree) has a length of one, the total length of any series will just be 2 + sqrt(2). The horizontal/vertical series of branchs has total length of 2 and the diagonal series has a total length of sqrt(2).

Usually when one begins to create a binary tree as a series of nodes, the tree fans out in a pyramidal shape and one quickly runs out of space as the number of nodes rapidly increases. This is familiar to anyone who likes to draw out genealogy charts. The use of this fractal form is a compact and much more elegant way to represent a binary tree than the binary fan form. And since it is a binary tree, one could use it to represent a genealogical chart of ones ancestors. Each node will represent one person and each of the two smaller branches will link to the next pair of nodes, one being that person's mother or their father. In the picture above, one branch of my family tree is portrayed by the red line, going back 13 generations. The convention used is that a turn to the left represents the mother line and a turn to the right, represents the father line. Thus all my father's ancestors lie on the right side of the large triangle and all my mother's, on the left side. The all father line (all right turns) forms a pure clockwise spiral and the all mother line (all left turns), a pure counter-clockwise spiral.  Every other branch will be a mixture of left and right turns.

Since this is a binary tree, each node can be assigned a binary address (0, 1, 10, 11, 101, 110, etc.)  The red drop is 0, the first node is 1, the point labeled father is 11 and the point labeled mother is 10,  using the convention that a turn to the left is a 0 and a turn to the right is a 1. The address of the node that is farthest on the right, next to the sun picture, for example, is: 11010101010101.  Each thread through the tree can also be considered one sample path of a coin-flip random walk (see entry below on April 20, 2007). So for those who like divination, one could toss a small grain of sand on the diagram at random and thus pick out a single random walk line (limited by the resolution in the diagram of course) or a single ancestral line, etc. and then determine some message or meaning from that.

I was initially inspired to investigate this kind of binary tree by a fractal spiral design shown to me one day in the Old Towne Coffee Shop by Huntsville's greatest magician, the Amazing Russell Davis. The fractal spiral he had discovered himself is simply one branch in the fractal binary tree above in which one always turns in the same direction. The spiral spirals down to infinitely small scales without end and likewise can be extended to ever larger scales without end as well with a doubling (or halving) of the scale with each pair of turns. It would be fun to imagine that one could hop onto such a spiral and get off at any scale in the universe, from the subatomic to the galactic and beyond!