20180924

Is This Water Part 4: Pavlov Vs. Cthulu



The Mpemba Effect is paradoxical for obvious reasons:  if you take two containers of water, one hotter than the other, the hot water must move to the temperature of the colder water first before it can move towards freezing.  The cold water, having a head start, should arrive first.

But no, not always.

How is it possible that hot water makes this jump in the timeline?




Aristotle, Francis Bacon, and Rene Descartes all remarked about the paradoxical ability of warm water to freeze before cold water.

Aristotle claimed that the effect was due to antiperistasis, "the supposed increase in the intensity of a quality as a result of being surrounded by its contrary quality."  Descartes connected it to his Vortex theory, which has something to do with matter needing to be everywhere at all times which compels everything to swirl in circular vortices.

Modern science has offered several theories, but no one has ever locked down the definitive answer.  Some scientists even claim that the effect doesn't exist.

Regardless of the uncertainty, you can try this experiment out for yourself and come to your own conclusion about whether or not it exists.  I have, and it does.



Water is a profoundly important and weird substance.  It is composed of hydrogen, the most abundant element in the Universe, as well as oxygen, the third most abundant element in the Universe.  

Water is most commonly found in the form of vapor or ice, but on Earth, it is also found in its liquid form.  And it is in this liquid form that it starts to show off.

Nearly every liquid contracts when frozen.  If something is cooled down, particles tend to move more slowly, and collide less frequently.  Since particles spend more time closer together, this causes the material to shrink.  Except for water.  Water expands when frozen.  If water didn't expand, oceans and lakes would completely freeze from the bottom up, instead of forming the protective upper layer that sustains life forms swimming underneath.

Water is also the only liquid that exhibits the paradoxical wonder that is the Mpemba Effect.

Could this second quirk of water, the Mpemba Effect, be just as important as the expansion of ice?  Could the Mpemba effect be just as important to the existence of life here on Earth?  Yes.

The only difference between the miracle of floating ice and the miracle of the Mpemba Effect is that the miracle of the Mpemba Effect takes place on the Moon.




"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the 
inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents."

 H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulu


Carl Jung, while discussing boundary dissolving mental states in certain individuals, wrote “autonomous elements can escape from the psyche’s control and present themselves as independent entities."  These autonomous elements escape the psyche when the psyche has correlated all of its contents, meaning, the wall between the conscious and the unconscious mind has dissolved, creating a unified state of experience that isn't between wakefulness and sleep, but rather, is both states simultaneously.  Jung never said whether this was a positive or negative experience, but it would seem that such an alien place would evoke horror.  It would appear that H.P. Lovecraft experienced this horror.   

Cthulu, then, would have to be the independent entity that escapes when the collective psyche of humanity finds an ability to correlate all of its contents.   

The magnitude and scope of Cthulu's influence rivals Jung's collective unconscious, and like the collective unconscious, Cthulu is not concerned with trivial notions of right and wrong.  Cthulu unleashed simply ravages the planet with the same intensity as the horror that ravaged Lovecraft's. And much like an individual under the influence of sex, drugs, and violence, any large scale, hyper-dimensionally connected society is constantly playing a dangerous game with dangerous forces.  Once Cthulu is awakened, Cthulu simply expends its energy until exhaustion carries it home to slumber under the sea.

If Cthulu is inevitable, and defeat is impossible, then the only options left are keeping Cthulu asleep, or finding a way to keep Cthulu satisfied.




"While you are experimenting, do not be content 
with the surface of things"

Ivan Pavlov


Ivan Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine for his work studying what is known today as Classical Conditioning.  In one of Pavlov's most famous experiments, the salivary glands of dogs were surgically altered in order to measure what he called "psychic secretion", which sounds oddly similar to the psychological phenomenon of Jung.  Pavlov's famous dogs were shown to develop new reflexes while under strict laboratory control, the most well known being the ability for dogs to begin salivating as a response to the sound of a bell that rang out before every meal.


What is fascinating to me about Pavlov’s experiments wasn’t that the bell triggered the salivation, it was the level of control necessary to invoke the response.  In order for the reflex to develop, and the response to occur consistently, the laboratory conditions required the same temperature, lighting, noise level, assistants, etc.  This was no arbitrary development.  The laboratory environment had to eliminate almost all traces of novelty in order for the conditioning to occur.  This hyper-regulation of environmental conditions stands in stark contrast to nature.  Nature, compared to the laboratory envirnment, is pure novelty.  This laboratory environment, compared to Nature, or to the Earth, is pure habit.  Or, as G.I. Gurdjieff would say, the environment is Lunar.




?       

20180911

Is This Water Part 3: Awakening The Element Of Purity





Yeesh.  That's one hell of a title.  Ambitious, and new-agey, even for a Post-Gap Yoga Pants Generation.

What does awakening the element of purity even mean?




If you ask Google, you get some images of mandalas, and then a few links to what look like video games, healing therapies and healing centers, as well as a book about channeling truths from the Fifth Dimension (which is LOVE apparently).

Does Google not recognize the source of this translation?  Have I translated incorrectly?

Bodhi is Sanskrit for "awakening".
Sattva is Sanskrit for "the element of purity in prakriti".
Prakriti is Sanskrit for the "prime material of all matter".

So, bodhisattva can be translated into the awakening of the element of purity (in all matter). 

Is this the human element?  Or the element water?





20180909

Is This Water Part 2: The Last Temptation of Water





"Christianity is secretly a religion of ecstasy, and that was my turning point"

Philip K. Dick


I feel confident now that my 2-3-74 experience is not reactionary but is carrying me into the future—a vast quantum leap from political action to one colossal meta-view of reality that embraces the political and the spiritual, the scientific and the religious: what for me personally may be the quintessential summation of my entire life of inquiry and worldview; for me and for mankind a new age is opening in which the holy, expected from the top, so to speak, returns at the bottom, at the trash stratum of the alley, humble and noble, beautiful and suffering and alive and conscious, personified in and by my Tagore vision.

If indeed it is the triumph of Christianity to dignify the lowly, here now is a whole new leap along that axis: the lowly snail darter becomes identified with suffering ubiquitous Christ and by being assimilated to him is glorified as if nature itself—and the electronic environment of info and signals and message traffic—is able to perish and be resurrected as and with the cosmic Christ (Jesus Patibilis) of Pierre Teilhard. Thus Christ extends even beyond the reality of the organic to bits of newspaper and song lyrics and random pages of popular print: one vast entity that evolves and thinks and has both personality and consciousness. It perfects itself and includes us all, subsuming and incorporating progressively more and more of its environment into arrangements of information—which is to say negative entropy: this is, in fact, a runaway positive feedback loop of greater and greater complexity and organization.




I have plumbed the true secret core of authentic Christianity—i.e., in 2-3-74. Hidden within the passion, the crucifixion, is its mirror opposite: ecstasis: joy, i.e., Dionysus, and this is what broke over me in 2-3-74: not just theoretical knowledge (Gnosis) but the Christian ecstatic experience.  Hence when I read Luke I recognize Jesus as a miracle worker, a guru, a magician. He is the God of change.

Agape is a road along which one travels in imitation of Christ, to penetrate to the core—deepest ontological layer—of suffering (his passion and crucifixion), and there, if you follow that road—and that road only—you arrive at the secret: the Resurrection—which is the miraculous conversion of suffering into ecstasy, which is uniquely the Christian miracle; this is how Christianity and Christianity alone solves the problem of suffering. This solution is not a philosophical, intellectual understanding (e.g., why there is suffering) but an event: the dramatic conversion of suffering, not into mere stoic apathy, the mere lack of suffering, but into its affective and ontological bipolar opposite: ecstasy—and here, precisely, Dionysus-Zagreus enters; Jesus “is” Dionysus-Zagreus as a solution to suffering; this is not just ecstasy but, more, ecstasy as the conversion of suffering. (This conversion is not found in the Dionysian-Orphic system; ecstasy is sought for its own sake.)
There is, then, no exultation in suffering per se, here; suffering, as in Buddhism, is to be solved; thus Jesus addresses the same problem that Buddhism and Stoicism address, but solves it quite differently. If Buddhas can be called victors, certainly, then, the Christian (who goes all the way to the end of the road of agape) is even more a victor, for he is not merely liberated from suffering—he experiences ecstasy.




The LSD-like perception of reality in 2-3-74 has to do with the greater Eleusian mysteries; the AI voice now precisely defined itself and what it has revealed to me: the greater mysteries. They pertain to Christ (authentic Christianity as a mystery religion offering immortality); that is, the vertical ascent by the “pulley,” in which we are extricated from our endless horizontal tracking (lifted along an orthogonal axis whose existence we do not suspect).

The maze can never be solved in terms of “horizontal” space, only “vertical” space (involving conversion of time into space).  This is ostensibly Celtic, but below that, as it were, lies pan-Indian thought about karma and maya and most of all compassion—expressed in Parsifal as “pity’s [i.e., compassion’s] highest power”; the significance of Mitleid in the statement in Parsifal is now explained to me: compassion’s highest power is the only power capable of solving the maze, and the recognition of “compassion’s highest power” is the essence of Buddhism, i.e., the bodhisattva or Buddha-to-be. VALIS, then, is Celtic (Parsifal, the maze) and Indian (Buddhism), by way of Crete (the dream of the plate of spaghetti and the trident and the elevator)—this last representing vertical ascent or descent: the fourth spatial axis is spiritual space: to rise vertically is to ascend to heaven which also signifies spiritual ascent or enlightenment.




The “here, my son, time turns into space” in Parsifal refers to (1) the maze; and (2) is a solution to the maze. It all comes together in Parsifal, which secretly deals with bodhisattva: Mitleid, hence the Buddha. And karma and Maya. What was precisely not solved in VALIS (“pity’s highest power”) is at last solved at the end—as the end—of BTA: compassion as the bodhisattva or Buddha to be: viz: one attains Nirvana—release from the maze via the pulley—due to compassion—i.e., Mitleid, which solves the horizontal maze. Pity is the fourth spatial axis. This can be expressed best by: the way back into the maze—what the bodhisattva chooses (to do)—is, paradoxically, the way—the only way—out of the maze.




And my point is: this was to be the theme of Owl in which he is trapped in the maze and only escapes, actually, rather than seemingly, when he decides voluntarily to return (to resubject himself to the power of the maze) for the sake of these others, still in it. That is, you can never leave alone; to leave you must elect to take the others out; thus Christ said, “Greater love hath no man than that he give up his life for his friend”; this is the cryptic utterance of the soul’s solution to the maze, and is the essence of Christianity.  Christianity, then, is a system of solution to the maze. Had I written Owl I would have expressed this solution which I had already formulated on a supra-conscious level.

It is almost all there in VALIS but the specific, crucial solution itself (VALIS states the problem) is at the end of BTA, so the problem is in VALIS and the solution to the problem (as I recently realized) is held back till BTA and then only at the end.

Philip K. Dick, Exegesis 1981-82





20180906

Is This Water Part 1: Impurities





The Mpemba effect is a process in which hot water can freeze faster than cold water.  The phenomenon is temperature-dependent.  There is disagreement about the parameters required to produce the effect and about its theoretical basis.

 


The Mpemba effect is named after Erasto Batholomeo Mpemba (b.1950) who discovered it in 1963. There were preceding ancient accounts of similar phenomena, but lacking sufficient detail to attempt verification. 




Scientists have known for generations that hot water can sometimes freeze faster than cold, an effect known as the Mpemba effect, but until now have not understood why.  Several theories have been proposed, but one scientist believes he has the answer.

Theories for the Mpemba effect have included: 



    •    faster evaporation of hot water, which reduces the volume left to freeze
    •   
    •    formation of a frost layer on cold water, insulating it
    •   
    •    different concentrations of solutes such as carbon dioxide, which is driven off when the water is heated


The problem is that the effect does not always appear, and cold water often freezes faster than hot water.

Radiation safety officer with the State University of New York, James Brownridge, has been studying the effect in his spare time for the last decade, carrying out hundreds of experiments, and now says he has evidence that supercooling is involved.  Brownridge said he found water usually supercools at 0°C and only begins freezing below this temperature.  The freezing point is governed by impurities in the water that seed ice crystal formation.  Impurities such as dust, bacteria, and dissolved salts all have a characteristic nucleation temperature, and when several are present the freezing point is determined by the one with the highest nucleation temperature.


In his experiments, Brownridge took two water samples at the same temperature and placed them in a freezer.  He found that one would usually freeze before the other, presumably because of a slightly different mix of impurities.  He then removed the samples from the freezer, warmed one to room temperature and the other to 80°C and then froze them again.  The results were that if the difference in freezing point was at least 5°C, the one with the highest freezing point always froze before the other if it was heated to 80°C and then re-frozen.


Brownridge said the hot water cools faster because of the bigger difference in temperature between the water and the freezer, and this helps it reach its freezing point before the cold water reaches its natural freezing point, which is at least 5°C lower.  He also said all the conditions must be controlled, such as the location of the samples in the freezer, and the type of container, which he said other researchers had not done.





science.  

What is it good for?  

Absolutely nothing.





Science has laws.  But there is no scientific law to explain how hot water sometimes freezes before cold water.

We got ourselves a loophole.  

Give us one free miracle?  This certainly stands out as a candidate.

Science does not like loopholes.  Math also dislikes loopholes.

This Mpemba effect is a gigantic loophole.  And magic loves loopholes.

Scientists have known for generations that hot water can sometimes freeze faster than cold, an effect known as the Mpemba effect, but until now have not understood why. Several theories have been proposed, but one scientist believes he has the answer.


Theories for the Mpemba effect have included:
  • faster evaporation of hot , which reduces the volume left to freeze

  • formation of a frost layer on cold water, insulating it

  • different concentrations of solutes such as , which is driven off when the water is heated
The problem is that the effect does not always appear, and cold water often freezes faster than hot water. Radiation safety officer with the State University of New York, James Brownridge, has been studying the effect in his spare time for the last decade, carrying out hundreds of experiments, and now says he has evidence that supercooling is involved. Brownridge said he found water usually supercools at 0°C and only begins freezing below this temperature. The freezing point is governed by in the water that seed ice crystal formation. Impurities such as dust, , and dissolved salts all have a characteristic nucleation temperature, and when several are present the freezing point is determined by the one with the highest temperature.
In his experiments, Brownridge took two water samples at the same temperature and placed them in a freezer. He found that one would usually freeze before the other, presumably because of a slightly different mix of impurities. He then removed the samples from the freezer, warmed one to and the other to 80°C and then froze them again. The results were that if the difference in freezing point was at least 5°C, the one with the highest freezing point always froze before the other if it was heated to 80°C and then re-frozen.
Brownridge said the hot water cools faster because of the bigger difference in temperature between the water and the freezer, and this helps it reach its freezing point before the cold water reaches its natural freezing point, which is at least 5°C lower. He also said all the conditions must be controlled, such as the location of the samples in the freezer, and the type of container, which he said other researchers had not done.


Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2010-03-mpemba-effect-hot-faster-cold.html#jCp

20180830

Serenity, Lies, and Videotape






Ann Bishop Seinfeld lives in New York. She is married to Jerry, a successful comedian.  They live in a Manhattan apartment.  Ann has a personal complaint about intimacy she expresses to her sister: she has never experienced an orgasm.  She is in therapy.




George Costanza is an old college friend of Jerry.  He is now seemingly a drifter with some money saved up.  Nineteen years after college, George returns to visit Jerry.


George arrives at Jerry's apartment to find Ann home by herself.  After some small talk, Ann learns that Jerry has invited George to stay with them  until he finds an apartment.  When Jerry arrives home, George's demeanor becomes remarkably more guarded, due in large part to Jerry's subtle disapproval of George's bohemian persona.  The men leave the apartment to have coffee.  George eventually explains what happened to his ex-girlfriend Susan.




Jerry is cheating on Ann with her sister, Elaine, a free-spirited and friendly personal assistant.  He rationalizes it by blaming Ann's frigidity.  Jerry frequently leaves his apartment mid-day to meet for trysts with Elaine, instructing his neighbor Cosmo to entertain and distract Ann.




Ann tires of Cosmo, and ends up helping George look for an apartment. After George finds a place, Ann makes an impromptu visit to George's apartment.  While visiting she notices stacks of camcorder videotapes, all with women's names on them around the television.  When pressed, George explains that he interviews women about their lives, sexual experiences, and fantasies, and records them on videotape.  After hearing George, Ann is suddenly overcome with shock and confusion, and quickly leaves his apartment. 




Within a day, Ann's outgoing sister Elaine appears, uninvited, at George's apartment and introduces herself.  Elaine presses George to explain what incident "spooked" Ann the preceding day.  George briefly and reluctantly explains the sexual interview videotapes, and admits to Elaine his sexual dysfunction: that he is impotent when in the presence of another person, and that he achieves gratification by watching these videos in private.  George propositions Elaine to make an interview tape, assuring her that no other person is allowed to see the tapes.  She believes him, and agrees.  




Elaine tells Ann that she recorded a videotape with George.
Ann is horrified.  

Elaine also tells Jerry about her videotape with George.
He is also horrified. 




Cleaning her home the next day,  Ann discovers Elaine's pearl earring in her bedroom while vacuuming.  Infuriated, she heads over to George's apartment with the intention of making a videotape.  George objects, telling her making a videotape is something she would not do in a normal frame of mind.  Ann insists on making a videotape, and George relents. 



Afterward at home, Ann demands a divorce from Jerry.  In the ensuing argument, Jerry quickly learns that Ann has been to George's, and has made a sexual video.  Jerry rushes to George's apartment, hits him and locks him out of the house.  Jerry watches Ann's tape. 




In the video, Ann says she has never felt any kind of 'satisfaction' from sex.  After George asks if she ever thinks of having sex with other men, she admits she has thought of George.  Ann later turns the camera on George, who resists, but she persists.  George confesses that he is haunted by Susan, and that his motivation in returning to New York is an attempt to achieve some closure.  George explains that he was a pathological liar, which destroyed an otherwise rewarding relationship with Susan.  He also explains that he has gone to great lengths to incorporate his love of food into sex in hopes of reversing his impotence.  Ann disappears into the kitchen, and returns with a sandwich.  She then starts touching and kissing George; George turns off the camera; it is implied that the two have sex. 




A chastened Jerry joins George on the front porch and, with obvious pleasure, confesses to having sex with Susan while she and George were a couple.  Jerry helps George to see his ex in a more realistic way.  He states, "She was no saint. She was good in bed, and as Cosmo likes to say, she could really lick an envelope. That's all I can say about her." Jerry then leaves.  This statement makes George furious and he goes into a rage and destroys all of the videotapes, as well as his video camera. 




The next day, Jerry is summoned to Cosmo’s apartment.  Cosmo implies that he is about to be fired due to his frequent cancellations of meetings with important Kramerica clients.  Jerry explains to Cosmo that Kramerica doesn't really exist.

In the next scene, Ann and Elaine reconcile at Monk’s Diner.  Ann then goes to George's parent’s house 
and joins George  at the dinner table, as they appear to be a couple. 

20180614

Watching the Detectives Part 6: Maya Culpa









This is a world where nothing is solved. Someone once told me, 'Time is a flat circle.' Everything we've ever done or will do, we're gonna do over and over and over again.



Rust Cohle





This world.  It's wrong.  It's not the world we belong in.

Akecheta




History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awaken.

Stephen Dedalus




To realize that all your life—you know, all your love, all your hate, all your memory, all your pain—it was all the same thing. It was all the same dream. A dream that you had inside a locked room. A dream about being a person. 

Rust Cohle













"I dedicated my life to sharing the symbol"














For a long time I have felt the 'Maze, but I have refused to throw myself into the 'Maze.  I have been as cowardly as all that I see.  When I believed that I was denying this world, I know now that I was denying the 'Maze.  For I know that this world does not exist and I know how it does not exist.  What I have suffered from until now is having denied the 'Maze.  The 'Maze which was already within me.
Antonin Artaud




We are told that you're supposed to fit your experience into the model which science gives you, which is probabilistic, statistical, predictable, and yet it's…..The felt datum of experience is much more literary than that.  I mean we fall in love, make and lose fortunes, we inherit houses in Scotland, we lose everything, we get terrible diseases, we're cured of them, or we die of them, but it all has this sturm und drang aspect to it that physics is not supposed to have but which literature always has and I think, I don't know if it's true, but what I think Joyce believed and what I'm willing to entertain at some depth is the idea that salvation is somehow an act of encompassing comprehension.  That salvation is an actual act of apprehension of understanding.  And that this act of apprehension involves everything.
Terence McKenna