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Listening to Radiolab, much fodder for the imagination. Like Benford's Law. For those not familiar, it basically states that "in lists of numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way. According to this law, the first digit is 1 almost one third of the time, and larger digits occur as the leading digit with lower and lower frequency, to the point where 9 as a first digit occurs less than one time in twenty. This distribution of first digits arises logically whenever a set of values is distributed logarithmically."
Or, more precisely: "Benford's law states that the leading digit d (d ∈ {1, …, b − 1} ) in base b (b ≥ 2) occurs with probability:"
Source: Wikipedia
Now this is intriguing. It can be explained to some extent and in some instances by mechanisms of growth (eg: fibonocci sequence), or in other word most systems & organisms "grow" and so when measured exhibit typical growth patterns (eg: cities - addresses grow out from center, hence disproportionate number of addresses beginning with a 1..). But note the qualifier - that to some extent and in some instances. There are apparently as well instances of data that conform to Bedford's law yet in no ways could be considered "alive" or "organic". Which is curious.
And, to add to the curiosity, in the same program (radiolab, numbers), the point is raised that while the recognition of numbers is an ability we are all born with, it's not the observation of linear numbers and quantity as we know it, rather instead a logarithmic means of counting - meaning that a child will recognize double and quadruple amounts more readily and primitive tribes who have not developed the same perspective we have, if asked to choose the midway point between 1 and 9, for example, would choose 3, whereas we - by training and force of habit - would choose 5.
Which is very curious indeed. I've explained it poorly, but listen to the radiolab program to hear it explained more in depth and in a much more interesting fashion...
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Jealousy. I've wondered about this, wondered where it came from. I've had girlfriends who'd been jealous, some more than others. And I'd been jealous myself. And of what value was it?
And I had an Epiphany.
Jealousy is the imagining of what we would do were we in our partners position.
It's the projection of our worst selves upon others. And, if we've made a bad match, maybe we're right.
And then there is lack of jealousy. In which we project our best selves upon others, imagine that they would do what we would in similar circumstance, by "we" I mean the best of "we", the "we" possessed of those noblest of qualities: love, loyalty, fidelity and honor.
And if we've again made a bad match, maybe we're wrong.
But I understand it now.
To boil it down, make it quotable, try this: "jealousy is the presumption that others are doing as we would do in their position."
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Sometimes I have my doubts.
Not about the serious things, like God and the universe and such, I have long ago worked those out. And if I hadn't there are countless others who have and will let you have the answers at a discount, although I think my reasoning is a little more economical (and, not that it matters, consistent and sane...). In any event the big issues aren't the ones that trouble me.
But there's other issues, loads of them, for which there aren't any clear answers.
Like 9-11. Sure, it's possible it was a carefully plotted terrorist attack. Why not, the terrorists, the Arabs, they all have good reason to loathe the United States. But to believe that is in a way to accept all the lies that followed, the "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in Iraq, to ignore the many "expert" opinions that contradict the "Official" findings. To disbelieve the official story puts you in the camp of wing nuts who believe the government planted explosives and brought down the towers themselves.
Probably the truth is somewhere in between. The government knew but allowed the plot to go ahead so it could rally support and go to war. Even that, however, presupposes a level of intelligence that I find it hard to credit the Bush administration.
There are other things, too.
Like Flying Saucers. I have no doubt that there is intelligent life elsewhere in our Galaxy. I have no doubt that if we survive, and given enough time, one day we'll make contact. But I'm not so sure that they (the extraterrestrials) have visited Earth, and I'm damned sure they haven't abducted Whitley Streiber. Ever. Not even once.
The grey area is in the visit to earth. There are undoubtedly UFO's, by definition anything that is unidentified is a UFO. But are they beings from another planet? Or is there another explanation?
I don't have the answers. So I turn to the internet, in this case a dubious source, but the best available (short of being taken on a trip by them myself). On the internet there are any number of experts, people who've held positions at high levels of government who say that the aliens are here. And at first hearing it's easy to dismiss one or two of them as being plausible crackpots, deluded, off the deep end...but the more testimonials you come across, the more doubt is sown in your mind. They can't all be crazy, can they?
"Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. There has been a certain amount of reverse engineering that has allowed some of these craft, or some components, to be duplicated. And there is some group of people that may or may not be associated with government at this point that have this knowledge. They have been attempting to conceal this knowledge. People in high level government have very little, if any, valid information about this. It has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and create confusion so the truth doesn’t come out."
Edgar Mitchell, Apollo 14 astronaut and sixth man on the moon
"I know other astronauts share my feelings... And we know the government is sitting on hard evidence of UFOs."
NASA astronaut Gordon Cooper, 1997
Those are just a couple of the more credible "witnesses". There are many more, anonymous names until you verify the positions they held and realize that, if anyone knew, they would know, that none were in a better position than themselves to know. And then there's Roswell, as preposterous as it seems that a flying saucer crashed in the desert, so much more ridiculous was the governments delayed reaction, the announcement that they'd captured a flying saucer, then the retraction....
It doesn't add up.
But the weight of intelligent opinions, of people of substance who claim to have seen or experienced something beyond the norm, is overwhelming. And even if half of them are hallucinating, lying, victims of false memories, mirages, ghosts on the radar, that still leaves a large number of cases without any easy answers or interpretations.
There are other things as well, the reputed Amero, the New World Order , Cabals of secret societies such as bankers who orchestrate the economy and our lives. I have no answers. It seems unlikely that bankers could so organize themselves to rule the world, especially in wake of the economic collapse, but even following the collapse they bore no repercussions. The rumours of internment camps throughout Montana , ChemTrails in the sky, some of it's nonsense, surely, and the facts misinterpreted, but a bit of research does confirm that the government has indeed considered and even experimented with many of these methodologies....
And while they undoubtedly wouldn't test these things on their own people - oops - ...
The big questions, the meaning of life, the universe and everything, I've got those figured out. The small questions, they plague me.
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The Aether is an old concept much revised. Originally from the Greek, it was a personification of the sky or heavens above. Later, in the middle ages it was the nesting crystal spheres that carried around the planets and stars in their orbits. Newton, amonst others, used the concept of the Aether to explain how light and heat might propogate through space - if regarded as waves (as some experiments seemed to show), then there must be then a medium which filled all of space, and that medium was "The Aether".
The very famous Michelson-Morley Experiment disproved the existence of the aether ironically by attempting to measure the "aether wind" the earth must create in its orbit about the sun. No aether wind was detected.
Now the aether was an important idea. It explained how the stars and planets kept their place in the sky. (They were suspended within crystal spheres). It explained how light and heat could travel across the vacuum of space (Aether is the medium through which they travel). But as we've been unable to detect it's presence the concept of an "aether" has fallen out of repute.
Or has it? Perhaps it has just been renamed.
By which I refer to the concepts of Space and Time - which provide many of the new "answers"the old aether used to. Or there's Dark Matter, which must fill the void of space to make our current view of the universe work. The problem no longer hinges on the propping of the stars up in the heavens, or the propogation of waves through space, now it hinges on one of gravitation - there's not enough observable matter in the unverse to account for the behaviour of stars, galaxies, etc. Dark Matter is postulated to be filling in the void. The problem with this is that we have no direct evidence of this dark matter, despite theories which state it must account for approximately 90% of the mass in the universe. For something of which we have no proof whatsoever there are an awful lot of theories and convoluted calculations that presuppose it's existence.
So the aether survives.
Now there is something about these theories I like to call the "Fudge Factor". It's where we presuppose the existence of something in order to explain the results we get. For example, I'm not rich, hence I can assume (presuppose) that God doesn't want me to be rich. Now we laugh, because I'm using an imaginary concept (God) to explain circumstances that might somehow be explainable by other means. We're too enlightened for my arguments. And, truth be told, the idea that "God" is to blame for anything is laughable. But it raises the question - why do we then allow for these sorts of explanations in science? "Dark Matter" is a very much accepted idea amongst scientists, despite the lack of evidence, because it allows them to explain things that otherwise would be too difficult or problematic.
So there's a similarity here, between science and religion, that the cult of science wouldn't be too comfortable acknowledging. It's not the only one - there is as well the thought of the Cosmological constant, first created by Einstein to create a steady-state universe, now borrowed by physicists to explain the accelerating universe. And if you try you'll find there are others.
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Lamarckian Evolution is a theory named after French Biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck that proposes people, animals and plants pass onto their descendents those traits that they develop in their lifetime, and conversely their descendents lose those traits they don't develop or use. Some examples might be a concert musician passing on his aptitude for music, nimble fingers and fine ear, to his children. These are things he developed in his lifetime, hence those traits / gifts were acquired by his offspring. Or the Giraffe has a long neck from stretching to reach high leaves. This theory is currently not favoured, replaced by Darwin 's more popular theory of evolution , which simply states that things (plants and animals) evolve as a result of chance mutations, favoured by the environment. (Natural Selection).
Now Lamarckian Evolution, on the surface, seems like common sense. We see children grow up into the same professions as their parents - (making use of the gifts evolution and their parents have conferred on them). And it's reassuring, knowing that our life's work won't be lost - those skills we develop will provide an edge for our children. And certain behaviours would certainly seem to run in families - certain types of madness, for example (genetic, but they identified it by the behaviour), intelligence, poverty and class, education - all seem to on the surface reflect a view that "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree". We know that watching or exposing yourself to violence desensitize you towards acting in a violent manner. And children of violence often act out violent scenarios. So it's not a bad theory at all, merely superceded by Darwin's.
Of course we've identified many genes that would predispose you to have a gift in a certain direction - explaining things in the sense that we tend to cultivate those abilities and talents we're good at, and disregard those we aren't. Which is not Lamarckian Evolution, as the hereditary gene causes the behaviour, not the behaviour changing the gene.
But there are increasing numbers of studies and scientists that suggest our behaviours, attitudes and beliefs can alter our gene expression.
Link: Science Daily on Gene Expression/Behaviour, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111205102713.htm
Which raises the question of whether the altered gene is passed on? In which case, perhaps there's something to it after all....
Further Reading: Technology Review: A Comeback for Lemarckian Evolution
Update: (May 15 - 09) - Another link seemingly supporting the idea of Lemarckian Evolution.