Rainbow over the minicipality

Rainbow over the minicipality

Saturday 29 October 2016

To the Brat! (Russian for 'brother'),

In recent times I have been trawling through memories and seeing them with a new understanding, particularly of our Father.  He was not what he seemed, I now believe.

I never thought of him as a 'Dress Designer' but he produced a range of Pret a Porte frocks under three lables every year through the 1950's.  He must have dressed our Mother, but I never knew that she or any of her friends were wearing dresses designed and manufactured by our Father. 

During the Olympics, I remember him at events (I was just old enough to go) dancing with all the Russian Women Athletes as well as the Russian Women Officials, who were reportedly spies.  I believe he was 'spying' and reporting secretly to the Government.  I went once to some event at some military shooting place, that was all very 'those sort of chaps' or whatever, higher ranks, and I was astonished at how he seemed to know everyone, but by then the Cold War was warming up and his abilities to speak Russian were no longer needed.  There is also a pendant from the Romanians in gratitude for his help, because he spoke that Language also, and I guess was asking them questions on behalf of the Government.  Remember the 'blood in the pool'? Just after Russia invaded Hungary?  Anyhow, like everyone doing that sort of thing, he could not speak of it, nor anything else that might be transpiring, so we never knew.  I have no idea what our dear Mother knew, but I assumed enough because she went along with it. 

The biggest revelation in my revised memories was to see that our Father had fallen out totally with his own Father.  Our Grand-Father died a few years before I was born, but after the start of the War.  I believe he was quite religious, having been part of the break-away from Elwood to form the Addas Congregations, and our Father was not, and I suspect this was a problem.  He went once per year on Yom Kippur, and one year I walked round with him to other Shules, as one did, and went behind the curtain to say hello to our Grand-Mother, so I was perhaps ten years old.  She must have died during the next year as we did not do it again.  The highway that was High Street, between St Kilda Shul on one side and Elwood on the other, only five minutes walk apart, was an enormous distance that was never broached.  Later I met people who had grown up on the other side of the highway, and their Jewish World was utterly different from mine, yet, physically it had been so close.  I think we suffered from a fractured chain of paternal/filial relationships.


Thursday 27 October 2016

The Southern Hemisphere

The Southern Hemisphere is not something we think of as a 'thing'.  It is more a location, and being spherical in shape is very difficult to contemplate in its entirity, especially when we are used to maps that are based on the Northern Hemisphere.

The world can be thought of with the South Pole at the top, or rather, tilted as is the axis of the world.  Then the world rotates clockwise, which is the natural way most things in Nature revolve.  It is the Northern Hemisphere that is on the bottom of the world.  We can imagine a spinning globe of a planet with a solid crust on the top.  As it spins, some of this crust breaks away and flows down the spinning ball.  Plate Techtonics is the crust of our world that is slowly sliding 'down', that is from South to North, in some great 'gravitational field' that is beyond our conception. 

Australia should position ourselves as leaders of the Southern Continents, and help South America and Africa develop and progress.  To a great extent, weather systems are distinct in the two hemispheres, for example, a Neuclear War in the North might not be fatal in the South, and other forms of social and economic systems could eaually be isolated.

We are generally thinking of China and India being the two great Northern Powerhouses that will overtake Europe and North America and with them locate nearly all Economic activity in the Northern Hemisphere.  However, eventually Africa and South America should rise.  Australia, Oceania, South East Asia as well as Africa and South America together, as a United Southern Hemisphere, could rival the North.  This could take a Century, by which time Antarctica will be populated with resettled refugees, amongst others. 

In two hundred years, the World Capital could be in a magnificent ice-palace at the Southern Pole.

Another reason why Australia should lead the Southern Hemisphere, and hence the world is that we have the oldest coninuous cultures amongst all human peoples.  The Australian Aboriginal Dances are memories of the way the world began.  It would be tragic if these memories were forgotten, but they appear (at the start of the 3rd millenium since the start of the Roman Empire) to be strengthening and spreading. 

Saturday 22 October 2016

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The Speed of Light is defined as 99792458 meters per second, but what is a meter and what is a second.  On examination, the meter is defined as how far light will travel in one 99792458ths of a second, which would be a meaningless circle of definitions excapt that we now take the Speed of Light to be a Mathematical Constant, in the same way the e and pi are constant so that now we just have a balance between the meter and the second. 

the second is now defined by a complex precision in the timing of a quantum fluctuation in a Cesium atom, and that is defined to be 9 192 631 770 times the atomic time scale chosen, perhaps because of its ease of measurement.  this is 30.66331898849837 times the Speed of Light. And why isn't the speed of light set at a simple billion, instead of this close approximation from the coincidental similarity of certain choices in our human-defined standards, like the cubit/inch/meter or the second?

This is not the same as the suggested minimum quantum of time itself, which is related to the incredibly tiny Plank's Number.  <p>


One day our species will have a totally different numbering and measuring system that will make us look to them as archaic, like Roman Numerals look to us.  The fundamental units will be redefined in terms of absolute values that exist in the world, not just what looks convenient to us, like the meter and the kilogram.  Measurements won't be linear like our present tape-measures, but exponential, so that the unit of measurement is related to the size of what is being measured.  It works in Science but we don't yet use it in normal, day-to-day life.<nl> I won't live to see it, sadly, probably not even if I had just been born this century.

It is such a waste of time thinking about these things, but it takes my mind of my imminent death.  I keep thinking that if the bleeding persists till Tuesday, I shall take myself to the new Cance Clinic and beg them to take me in.  Then I can cancel Mr C.... what's his name.  I might yet make it to the Opera.  That was the icing on the cake of pain, so to speak, finding the very day of the test was the day I had booked for the Opera, to see Anne Bolyne.  I don't have a proper diary/calendar.

Getting Personal!

what use is a personal Blog if I don't tell it my real, inner thoughts?  Like how I am freaking out right now because I am shitting blood.  Whom can I talk to?  Medicos?  Hah!!  Ten minutes to listen to their platitudes like "(I know it is probably fatal, but I'll tell you:) it looks small, see this Specialist in about it. (I know you won't see him for a month and then it will be another month for the test which can only happen on a specific day, no matter how inconvenient, but I'll tell you:) Nothing to worry about, you will be fixed up in no time."

One might pray, of course, but that freaks me out even more.  I dabbled in 'Ceremonial Magic' with a method of my own devising that I called "Faerie Magick" and called myself Uncle Gnaum.  I did my own progression, firstly working through the Tarot Pack till I reached the Magus, and then moved to the next series of training that took me up to the High Priestess.  I did a lot of amazing Meditations that were certainly all in my head, but I did feel totally connected to something Universal.  

The big secret that I have never told anyone is that I am a Cannabis Addict.  When I was having the Counseling at SECASA, I didn't tell Donovan and when I was seeing Anastasia at Relationships Australia, I didn't admit it, but always kept it a secret.  That Dr Anthony did ask about drugs in a very vague way, and I answered equally vaguely.  Perhaps then I used my oft quoted generalisation that I haven't smoked cigarettes for decades, which is true as I only smoke 'green'.


Saturday 15 October 2016

DanceHouse, 12th Tishri



Dear DanceHouse People,
How do I recover my white garment, washed in Murray water?  I don’t like this emphasis on colour.  What are we, the ‘whities’ who need our sins expunged by traditional washing.  I deplore the use of ‘black’ to define Aboriginal people, many of whom do not have very dark pigmentation.  It means the same as ‘nigger’ which has deplorable connotations, yet people like to own ‘black’.
We are coming up again soon to Australia Day, which Aboriginal people deliberately use divisively, by rejecting the general celebration of our nation in favour of a separate mourning of the ‘invasion’.  As long as this persists, Reconciliation will be impossible.  As an all-inclusive  nation, we need to find a different day on which to remember and mourn the tragedies of the past.  This shameful history should be commemorated by all Australians, not just those who can prove genetic, ancestral occupancy of Country since ancient times. 
I see from the DanceHouse Diary that DanceHouse is at the forefront of the divisiveness and internal social dislocation that tragically splits the world’s community of people.  ‘Anti-Capitalism’ is a failed philosophy that is ‘so last century’.  It is the sort of movement that has generated phenomena like Trump.  I notice that you charge a ticket price!  You should make your performances free and include a voluntary donation box at the entrance, where you would most probably take in more than you do selling tickets.  It is fine being an adolescent iconoclast, but it is quite unrealistic in the real world and the predominance of these divisive attitudes of unbridled hatred towards others produces the worst reactions.
In the second performance piece, where two people, apparently with international ‘dance’ experience. Just flopped around for an hour in a dark, undefined space, moving slightly closer and then further from time to time, which was as close to meaningless as anything I have seen.  As to the soundtrack, I think one of the conflicting voices repeated the Moslem declaration of faith, but the other sounds were meaningless to me.  Were they Xian chants?  It was essentially trivial movement to noise.  It was quite hypnotic, and I cannot say I did not enjoy it – on some level, but watching the trees move in the wind, which I often like to do, is just as entertaining.
Better explanation of the first performance piece would have been better.  Fortunately, I read the brief notes that were hidden away in the foyer and which I am sure most people did not read.  I did look at the plates, but there was no time to study them to see if there was hidden significance in what was drawn.  None of us knew what to do when we sat at the table.  I think one person gobbled up their scone without any idea of its significance, while I was horrified by what it all meant and found it very confronting and thought provoking.  I would not eat the bread because I am a vegetarian, let alone not a cannibal, but the shock of thinking about the slavery that used to produce this bread and the symbolism of Aboriginal blood would have prevented me from even one bite.  There was too much waiting without knowing what was happening and that greatly distracted from the experience. 
I liked the idea of the washing, but the projected lists of massacres was unintelligibly written and so spasmodic in its projection that only the idea of it had meaning and its realisation was a failure.  I thought the ratio between the huge, central performance space and the audience space along the dusty edges of the floor said something about your attitude to us, the people for whom you perform.  Clearly, from all this, DanceHouse is all about ‘us’ and I regret that I am an outsider and not one of ‘you’.  Gosh!  I so hate all this divisiveness. 
Please send me back my white garment, randomly numbered ‘1’.  It will become a treasured part of my wardrobe, remembering the context in which it was laundered.  The massacres were a long time ago, but the attitude of inter-racial hatred that is promoted mostly by Aboriginal people and their fellow-travellers is causing a perpetuation of the tragedies.  I understand that now days more Aboriginal babies are being removed from their families than before the Stolen Generation Report.  There are things wrong with our Economic System, but they need to be fixed, and that will not happen while people like you dream of replacing it with some sort of ideal, theoretical utopia, and constantly express this hatred and contempt for other humans instead of working within the ‘system’ to make it work for everyone.  This conclusion is the result of me reaching seventy years of age and having gradually observed the folly of my own youthful rebelliousness.  Fifty years ago I would have agreed with all your mythical anti-establishment values, but now I am just very depressed and disappointed to see that our global society is no closer to harmony than we were in centuries past.  The more things change the more they stay the same.
The Melbourne Festival gives us the opportunity for unexpected experiences.  Some are truly transcendental, but others just make me think, and sadly what I think is ‘same old same old – going nowhere’.  We must not forget the tragedies of the past, but we need a Sorry Day for all of us, not a divisive one from which us ‘whities’ are excluded.  BTW, I studied Aboriginal Cultures with Open University a few years ago and got a High Distinction, so I feel I have a right to comment on these issues, not that anyone listens or agrees. 
Regards,
naum@tered.org

Sunday 2 October 2016

The Myth of Gravity.



The Myth of Gravity.
There is no such phenomenon as a ‘force of gravity’ that sucks things together instantaneously at all distances.  It is a myth that came into Physics while Natural Philosophy was still part Theology.  Like Theology, it is ‘arm-chair philosophy’, thinking up the world  ‘a priori’. 
The world does behave as if there were such a ‘force’, but this is just a heuristic model.   that is not the same as accepting as an act of faith that such a ‘force’ exists and is the cause of the observations.
Everything we attribute to Gravity can be explained by simple Mechanics, examining the Potential and Kinetic energy possessed by Mass, and describing the conversion of one to the other.
The apple fell on Sir Isaac Newton’s head because it had acquired potential energy as the tree grew and lifted it up as well as the ‘work’ done in lifting the water up the biological system that became trapped in the pendulous apple.
Like all systems at a higher level of energy than their surroundings, as soon as some form of releasing that energy is available, the body dissipates it according to strict mathematical rules.  When something is hot, it wants to cool down, and if there are convection currents, or a conductor making contact, it will cool down, and it will even radiate away the heat to cool down.
In the same way something with Potential Energy, like the apple that is only held aloft by the slenderest of twigs, will reduce this energy level if possible.  When the twig snaps, the potential energy changes to kinetic energy according to the well-known formulae, but it has nothing to do with being sucked down by a ‘force’.
Now we have dispelled that myth, it is clear that another must be exposed.  There is no ‘Dark Matter’.  The whole concept of the galaxy is misunderstood, because of the belief in the ‘force’ of Gravity.  The model used by Physicists is of a giant wheel, with spokes like the tendrils of the ‘force of Gravity’ holding on to everything as it spins around.  Or like a huge Merry-go-round, with the horses, or constellations, held in place and tied to the centre by the structure of the machine.  It is a simple calculation, and even common sense would confirm that a vastly large Merry-go-round would have distant horses racing at incredible speeds, and that the ropes or linkages that held on to them would need to be very strong to stop them all flying off into the distance.  The mathematical rules that we have already accepted as apparently valid would indicate that for Gravity to provide the ‘force’ there would need to be about ten times more mass than obviously exists. 
Assuming a ‘big bang’ or something equivalent the details of which we need not now consider, after which all matter moved away from itself, expanding radially in all directions.  Then, if one considers that initially the rate of expansion was exceedingly high, but was gradually converted to Potential Energy, in the same way that any forms of matter that move apart from each other must increase the Potential Energy between them.  It is only by the imposition of some form of Energy upon Matter, that Masses can have their distances changed, which is Newton’s valid, First Law.
In the Early Universe, as imagined, the tiniest wave-packets of potential matter must have been quite random and moving apart at vast speeds that were gradually decreasing.  We know from Mathematics that random chaos becomes clumped by chance, and so by the time atoms had formed, there were places throughout the Cosmos where bits of matter were already seeding the inter-play and multi-dimensional tug of war between all particles everywhere.  The bigger some bits get, the more they suck in other, smaller bits.  This process has proceeded till now, when we have a Cosmos dotted with ‘black holes’ that are super-compressed matter that posses Potential Energy with particles in their vescinity.  They act like a plug-hole as all the surrounding dust and particles are gradually sucked in.  The spinning happens for a similar reason that cyclones form, and they become flat due to the associated spinning magnetic field.   
Galaxies are not big wheels, held together by Gravity, but the swirling patterns of intergalactic dust that are falling down, into a central hole.  It is only recently that Astronomers stopped denying the existence of a massive Black Hole at the centre of every Galaxy, including our.  The masses that may be correctly estimated for galactic Black Holes might only be a fraction of the mass that has fallen into them.  Some mechanism that we as yet cannot contemplate might convert this Mass back to Energy in forms we cannot perceive and this could be the missing ‘Dark Energy’ that appears to be making galaxies move apart at an increasing rate, because they must be acquiring the Kinetic Energy of this expansion from somewhere.
Einstein asserted that the ‘force’ of Gravity did not exist but he explained the appearance of matter behaving as if such a ‘force’ did exist by the two dimensional image of an elastic sheet, warped by the weight of matter down which other matter will tend to roll.  However, that is just a geometric model of the underlying mathematics.
The recently observed phenomenon called ‘gravity waves’ that are postulated to result from the collision of galactic Black Holes is not proof of the existence of hypothetical ‘gravitons’ and their associated gravity waves that are postulated to be the mechanism for the promulgation of Gravity through space. 
Engineering, like our traditional schools of Physics, believes in Gravity and tries to overcome it by clumsy means.  With a better understanding of Energy as a fundamental state of existence instead of the mythical and spooky ‘force of Gravity’, we may yet devise means of transport that change our Momentum and Potential Energy in ways that seem like Science Fiction now.
Science progresses by postulating possibilities ‘a priori’ from theory and from first principles.  Then, most importantly, the theories are tested against the Real World using repeatable experimentation.  Only what is proved to exist, both with consistent theories as well as physical evidence can exist.  What is not yet known to Science does not yet exist.  However, there is another possible logical difficulty.  Just because a theory appears to be in accordance with the Real World, and does successfully predict outcomes, it does not mean that theory is correct.  More than one possible way the world could exist could produce the same set of real world outcomes.  Just because the Theory of Gravity provides good mathematical predictions does not mean it is the explanation, it is a Syndrome, not a Disease, to use an analogy.
Another branch of Science that would benefit from abandoning the Myth of Gravity is Quantum Mechanics, at the smallest scales of physical size that are imaginable.  Electricity and Magnetism were shown to be related ‘fields’ and they can be integrated with the Strong and Weak forces that only occur within the nucleus of atoms, but if Gravity exists as a ‘force’ in the world we perceive at the scales of magnitude we experience, then it must exist at the sub-atomic level where the rules of Physics become Quantum Mechanics, and there the quest for Quantum Gravity is one of the still unsolved problems in Physics.  Except there is no problem as there is no Gravity.
In this new Millenium, our human understanding of the world is going to be quite different from the primitive perceptions and folk-explanations that satisfied our ancestors.  Whether we believe in our own Consciousness and a Universal Consciousness or not, we no longer need a ‘God of the Gaps’ to explain the real world, nor do we need a mythical ‘force’ to explain why we fall off cliffs.