Chaos and Strange Attractors

Chaos and Strange Attractors

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Since Leonardo da Vinci first pondered the branching of tree limbs and roots, the turbulence of water and clouds, chaos has come a long way...theoretically.

The word "Chaoscope" was invented by Ralph Abraham to describe computer tools used to help comprehending dynamic systems, a superset of the strange attractors.

Chaos theory, in mathematics and physics, deals with the behavior of certain nonlinear dynamical systems that (under certain conditions) exhibit the phenomenon known as chaos, most famously characterised by sensitivity to initial conditions (see butterfly effect). Examples of such systems include the atmosphere, the solar system, plate tectonics, turbulent fluids, economies, and population growth.

Systems that exhibit mathematical chaos are deterministic and thus orderly in some sense; this technical use of the word chaos is at odds with common parlance, which suggests complete disorder. See the article on chaos for a discussion of the origin of the word in mythology, and other uses. When we say that chaos theory studies deterministic systems, it is necessary to mention a related field of physics called quantum chaos theory that studies non-deterministic systems following the laws of quantum mechanics.

More from Wikipedia

I love the smell of chaos in the morning...

Malleus Maleficarum

Cover of the seventh Cologne edition of the Malleus Maleficarum, 1520

The Malleus Maleficarum ("The Hammer of Witches" or the "Hexenhammer") is considered by many to be the classic Roman Catholic text on witchcraft, although it was in fact condemned by the Inquisition in 1490, and never officially used by the Catholic Church. First published in 1487, the book is notorious for its use in the witchhunt craze of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries.

It was compiled by two Dominican inquisitors, Jacob Sprenger and Heinrich Kramer. They submitted the book to the University of Cologne's Faculty of Theology on May 9, 1487, hoping for its endorsement. This is usually taken as the date of publication, although earlier editions may have been produced in 1485 or 1486. It was published in a number of editions, thirteen times from 1487 to 1520 and sixteen times from 1574 to the Lyon edition of 1669. The book was popular throughout Western and Central Europe, although less so in England and The Netherlands, and was accepted by both Catholics and Protestants.

Through the Renaissance and the entire time that witchcraft hysteria reigned, it was the most influential guide for popular witchhunters. Montague Summers called it: One of the most important, wisest and weightiest books in the world. During its time it was second only to the Bible in sales, until John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress was published in 1678 and exceeded it.

The Pyramid of Fire

The Pyramid of Fire explores
the spiritual teachings in
an unknown Aztec manuscript:

In 1961 an unknown Aztec codex was revealed to Beat poet and explorer Marty Matz by a Mazatec shaman in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico. This codex presents a profound metaphysical teaching describing how the end of time will bring about a visionary ascent. At the behest of his Mazatec teacher, Matz transcribed this pictorial codex into a literary form that would preserve its initiatory teachings and reveal its secret meanings to a wider audience. Pyramid of Fire is an epic poem that provides a vehicle to transport the initiate into the higher realms of consciousness. It represents a barely surviving thread of teachings that have been passed down in secret since the time of the Conquest. The solar energy within what the ancients called the "serpent of consciousness" is the spirit by which man is translated to the stellar realm at death. Line-by-line commentary by John Major Jenkins provides insights into the perennial philosophy contained in the codex and its relevance to our times.

THE SEVEN TRUMPETS

CHAPTER IX THE SECOND HALF OF THE SEVENTIETH WEEK: THE SEVEN TRUMPETS Written By S.R. Shearer

THE SEVEN TRUMPETS

And now a new and much more fearful period is ushered in, a period which will differ from that of the Seven Seals in as much as light differs from darkness - for with the Seven Trumpets, the supernatural events of the Seventieth Week will commence.

THE EXPECTATION OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS

One of the most fascinating discoveries that anyone who has investigated the supernatural eventually makes, is the fact that there exists today - even in well educated circles - a belief that our world is receiving communications from higher intelligences - intelligences which are readying mankind for an extraterrestrial visitation. It is absolutely incredible how the stories concerning UFOs seem to coincide on this point. The emergence of hundreds of UFO cult groups within the last few decades, all preaching a similar message, along with the appearance of such films as Close Encounters, Independence Day, The Arrival, Fire in the Sky and films of a similar nature are evidence of a growing belief, or at least interest, in the inevitability of a soon-to-come contact with beings not of this earth - of spiritual beings who are soon to descend on our world in great numbers. For how else can it be explained that so many different groups in so many different parts of the world - entirely unknown to each other - claim to have heard essentially the same message?

We are left to consider seriously the possibility that intelligences of great power beyond our earth have a selfish interest and purpose in preparing our world to accept personages they would like to install as our world rulers.

And herein lies the awful meaning behind the Seven Trumpets! This is their terrible secret!

Loving Jesus

Practiced since 1995 by members of The Family International — both male and female members are taught that Jesus literally desires to have sex with them.

The "Loving Jesus revelation" calls on Family members to do three things:

1. They are to visualise their sexual activity as happening with Jesus.
2. They are called on to masturbate to Jesus.
3. They are told to say "love words," or talk dirty, to Jesus as they are having sex. Karen Zerby has published a list of sexually explicit expressions that her followers could use when making love to Jesus.

During these activities, men are instructed to visualise themselves as women "in the spirit", so as not to engage in a homosexual relationship with Jesus.

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via aberrant news

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See where idolatry leads you? Focus on the message, people.
For Christ's sake.
-Ib

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The Lie

important links

Theism

Arguments for the Existence of a God

Christianity

Hinduism

Islam

Judaism

Mormonism

"Happy is the Man that Feareth Always": Psychology vs. Religion (2005) by Michael Moore and Daniela Kramer

Moore and Kramer analyze four main conflicts between humanistic psychology and prominent religious precepts found in Jewish, Christian, and Islamic prayers. These conflicts concern locus of control, self-esteem, social values, and the status of the family. The authors conclude that the messages promoted by various prayers are diametrically opposed to the goals of humanistic psychology and progressive education.

Oil and Water: Abrahamic Monotheism vs. the Buddha's Dharma by Gan Uesli Starling

A Buddhist philosopher responds to the often heard claim of persons being both Buddhist and theist, presenting five striking points of divergence between Buddhism's core doctrines and the concept of God, and then citing Buddhist scripture showing that Lord Buddha very specifically negates any and all theist doctrine.

Review of The End of Faith (2005) by Kenneth Krause

In this review of Sam Harris' The End of Faith, Kenneth Krause notes Harris' most important points about the destructive nature of faith. After pointing out that hundreds of millions of Americans hold beliefs clearly inconsistent with well-established scientific and historical facts, Harris turns to a discussion of how faith adversely affects our daily lives, directly motivates religious violence, and even threatens the future of civilization. The problem is not so much specific religious doctrines as it is the principle of faith itself--a principle which eschews reason and ends all meaningful conversation. Harris also blames religious moderates as much as fundamentalists for the ongoing religious conflicts of our times. Though Krause greatly appreciates all of these points, he ends by noting at least two deficiences of this book.

We Are Too Weak to Walk Unaided: A Family Therapist View of the Pathogenic Aspects of Prayer by Michael Moore and Daniela Kramer

Many aspects of psychology are at loggerheads with religion. In this paper excerpts from prayers, hymns and scriptures of the three monotheistic religions are used to illustrate major areas of conflict between these two institutions. Special attention is given to those aspects of prayers which contradict basic tenets of psychological well-being not only of individuals but also of families. The discussion is divided into four major fields: Feudalism vs. egalitarianism, developmental issues, defense mechanisms, and interpersonal control mechanisms. In each field, several examples, organized around subtopics, show how the manifest message of religious texts legitimizes and encourages practices considered pathogenic by the standards of various psychological approaches.

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Seems like most folks are more caught up in Themism than Theism...as in Usandthemism. Also, to an alarming degree, is the popularity of Meism.
-Ib

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Quantum Trickery

Quantum Trickery: Testing Einstein's Strangest Theory
By DENNIS OVERBYE

Einstein said there would be days like this.

This fall scientists announced that they had put a half dozen beryllium atoms into a "cat state."

No, they were not sprawled along a sunny windowsill. To a physicist, a "cat state" is the condition of being two diametrically opposed conditions at once, like black and white, up and down, or dead and alive.

These atoms were each spinning clockwise and counterclockwise at the same time. Moreover, like miniature Rockettes they were all doing whatever it was they were doing together, in perfect synchrony. Should one of them realize, like the cartoon character who runs off a cliff and doesn't fall until he looks down, that it is in a metaphysically untenable situation and decide to spin only one way, the rest would instantly fall in line, whether they were across a test tube or across the galaxy.

The idea that measuring the properties of one particle could instantaneously change the properties of another one (or a whole bunch) far away is strange to say the least - almost as strange as the notion of particles spinning in two directions at once. The team that pulled off the beryllium feat, led by Dietrich Leibfried at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in Boulder, Colo., hailed it as another step toward computers that would use quantum magic to perform calculations.

But it also served as another demonstration of how weird the world really is according to the rules, known as quantum mechanics.

Anton Zeilinger of the University of Vienna said that he thought, "The world is not as real as we think.

"My personal opinion is that the world is even weirder than what quantum physics tells us," he added.

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Burning Man

Grey Lodge

Riddle of the Sphinx

The Zodiac Cipher

The Giza Sphinx
(courtesy of P. Wallace)

Unknown to most astrologers, the 12 signs of the zodiac describe the occurrence of a highly energetic celestial explosion and, by means of constellation pointer stars, indicate that this outburst originated at the core of our Galaxy. The signs convey this explosion concept through the use of metaphor. Each sign, through its personality descriptions and set of associated attributes, portrays a specific universal principle taking place in nature. Just as the letters of an alphabet form an intelligible word when sequenced in the proper order, so too, these universal principles, when properly sequenced, relate a science of how ordered form (in particular matter and energy) are spontaneously born into existence. This is quite impressive since it is only in the latter half of the twentieth century that modern scientists have discovered this same science of structural self-organization!

But the sequence in which the constellations are ordered along the ecliptic (that shown in the box below), is not the order that properly presents this science. The zodiac was designed as a cryptogram that challenges us to discover how to rearrange the order of the signs.

Aries	Taurus	Gemini	Cancer	Leo	Virgo	Libra	Scorpio	Sagittarius	Capricorn	Aquarius	Pisces
+	-	+	-	+	-	+	-	+	-	+	-
c	f	m	c	f	m	c	f	m	c	f	m

Question: If this message was so important to convey, why didn't the authors of the zodiac constellations arrange the zodiac signs so as to properly express their science of matter-energy creation? Why did they require that the recipient would have to rearrange the signs from the order they were presented along the ecliptic?

Why the zodiac's message was constructed as a cryptographic puzzle: A message framed in terms of universal symbols may be conveyed from one culture to another even when there is an inherent barrier to linguistic communication. By casting such a message in the form of a cryptogram, one that includes a "cryptographic check" mechanism that signals the recipient when he has correctly deciphered the message, the transmitting civilization thereby provides a way for the recipient to understand that he has correctly interpreted this symbolic message, since there is no possibility for direct communication between recipient and sender. In this way the inherent vagueness of symbolic communication may be greatly reduced. Because the goal of this kind of cryptogram is clarity, rather than obscurity, it is sometimes called an anticryptogram.

Determinism as Enlightenment

As has been discussed...there are unenlightened people for whom the idea of no free will is entirely plausible, and who are very scientific-minded and skeptical of any religious, mystical, or "spiritual" beliefs or teachings.

A person who subscribed to a reductionist causal determinism philosophy or who believed in B. F. Skinner's behavioral theories, would likely still take it for granted that he existed as an individual separate self. Such a person may not be shocked when experiencing a different form of determinism (block universe rather than causal chain) in the mystic state. However, the experience of the individual's ego dying and "its" self-identity or consciousness being revealed as a reflection of a universal shared consciousness that encompasses, transcends, and actually creates everything that he previously thought of as the universe can be enormously powerful. Logically, if there is no separate self there can be no free will for what is now recognized as the illusory individual. But it's the no-separate-self insight that is primary in this scenario.

The newly enlightened person, agnostic or atheistic only hours earlier, now understands what those Hindus meant by Brahman and Atman. He knows not only that something exists that can be called "God", he knows what it is and that he is a part of it and it a part of him. If this person's suspicion of or belief in no-free-will gets revised a bit, but basically confirmed by the mystic experience, that's icing on the cake.


determinism

The Cosmic Serpent

The Cosmic Serpent by Jeremy Narby takes a serious look at how neurogenetic consciousness informs awareness, knowledge, symbolism and culture. His comparison of the ancient cosmic serpent myths to the genetic situation in every living cell reveals the immortal biomolecular wizard behind the curtain of everyday life. His anthropological study, ayahuasca experience and scientific speculations weave a tale of shamans who bring their consciousness down to molecular levels with sophisticated neurotransmitter potions in order to perceive information contained in the coherent visible light emitted by DNA.

Some biologists describe DNA as an "ancient high biotechnology," containing "over a hundred trillion times as much information by volume as our most sophisticated information storage devices." Could one still speak of technology in these circumstances? Yes, because there is no other word to qualify this duplicable, information-storing molecule. DNA is only ten atoms wide and as such constitutes a sort of ultimate technology: It is organic and so miniturized that it approaches the limits of material existence.

In the early 1980s, thanks to the development of a sophisticated measurement device, a team of scientists demonstrated that the cells of all living beings emit photons at a rate of up to approximately 100 units per second and per square centimeter of surface area. They also showed that DNA was the source of this photon emission.

REGs Predict the Future

Random Event Generators Predict the Future

For the past seven years, random number generators have been running all over the world, electronically flipping 200 coins each second, with the intention of measuring a global consciousness. The Global Consciousness Project (GCP), originating from Princeton, have named these random event generators Electrogaiagrams (EGGs) and are using them to test whether a human consciousness extends a field around the earth which can change the results of random events. They claim that when an important event occurs, such as the 9/11 terrorist attack or the Indian Ocean tsunami, the random event generators start to display patterns that should not exist in truly random sequences.

Not only does the GCP detect spikes of less-than-random activity around some important events, but according to the project it actually predicts them, too. In the aforementioned 9/11 attack there was a bizarre spike of non-random activity four hours before the attacks; as for the Indian Ocean tsunami, analysts say that the EGGs detected it 24 hours in advance. “We may be able to predict that a major world event is going to happen,” says Roger Nelson, the project leader. “But we won't know exactly what will happen or where it's going to happen.”

For more details:
The Global Consciousness Project Homepage
Wikipedia entry on the Global Consciousness Project

Politics Explained

Politics Explained

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FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all of the cows. The government gives you as much milk as you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and put them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs as the regulations say you need.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

LIBERTARIAN/ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

Post-Ego

"Je est un autre." —ARTHUR RIMBAUD, Lettre du Voyant.

"... A new breed of developmental theory is likely to arise... Its central technical concern will be how to create in the young an appreciation of the fact that many worlds are possible, that meaning and reality are created and not discovered, that negotiation is the art of constructing new meaning by which individuals can regulate their relations with each other." —JEROME BRUNER, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds.

Each of us is a unique reality, a personal universe, the only focus of a private world. It is precisely in our own awareness, our devoted concentration, that we are able to define -and finally to transform ourselves. As we know from day-to-day experience, reality is a bubbling stew of observations, memories and interpretations. For this reason, it is perhaps today's new mediartist, who most closely approaches and personifies Oliver Sacks' dream of a science of the individual. It took the human mind 20.000 years to arrive at this point in history; from the first primitive tool to the sophisticated computer of today. The beginning of 'self' consciousness is the prime creation of man and by doing so, man transforms himself. Moreover, man can communicate knowledge acquired by experience to other members of the group. From the moment word and creative gesture were born, man has tried to capture his subjective experience of time. In his struggle for survival, man takes possession of the natural by transforming it. By attaching significance to similarity - the process of mimesis: 'making alike', man transforms nature into art. With the use of tools he extended his power. But before man became a tool-maker, he was certainly a dreamer, already using his intuition and his imagination for concept formation: as a symbol-maker, a story teller, a sign —and a picture-maker, it shows the interrelated origins of art and technology. In a magical act of creation, religion, science and art were combined in a latent form.

***Merry Christmas***

Thanks, Mom