Crabbee's blog
I have not blogged much lately, mainly because I have been having too much fun journeying the web and bookmarking interesting science, alternative science, and other more unusual websites and weblogs. Recently, I discovered Del.icio.us Social Bookmarking and have been collecting Crabbee's Del.icio.us Bookmarks!
Knowing that climate, like the weather, is a complex of chaotic systems within chaotic systems, I keep up my usual relentless hope that the gloomy forecasts concerning the global warming crisis are most likely overstated. So, I have continued to follow the rather technical articles in Real Climate with great interest. There is very much more to consider than we are recieving through the simplified reports from the mainstream media, so I take the time to read and re-read the articles in Real Climate. Here is a quote from one of the simpler sections of the article there by Gavin Schmidt and Stefan Rahmstorf, assessing the widely reported 11ºC warming, climate crisis. This is a crisis that many are now expecting our world to face in ten years - if we do not make distinct, drastic, lifestyle changes in the direction of what is often nowadays called sustainability.
What a deep sources of wondrous "new things" I keep finding around the internet! I have been exploring the news and archives at The Scientist and was "lost" for most of yesterday, just trying to catch up with this ongoing collection of marvels and grasp little bits of miracle, here and there! Many articles hooked my attention - too many for me to pick out any one of them for this report. This shamanic practitioner grows more ecstatic with every new page describing how, in diverse ways, the practices of advancing bioscience are now dissolving and coagulating the secrets hiding within existance itself, working nearer and nearer the ultimate boundaries of living and being!
When Nanotechnology and Biotechnology were brought together by Professor Carlo Montemagno at the University of California, Los Angeles, nature's wisdom and art's design synergized to produce tiny living robots! These devices are less than a millemeter long, move by themselves without external power, and are are "grown" from rat heart muscle cells - over silicon based or plastic "bones" with mini-hinges.
There are many crows in our neighborhood, and I not only watch them - I "caw" at them, whenever they come close, and even from afar. Naturally, these crow-companions do not often show any signs of acknowleging, or even recognizing my greetings. I suspect that I am speaking in the crow equivalent of, not just a foreign language, but total gibberish!
Yet, once in a while the crows around here, do seem to be "blessing" me with a surprise, especially close, encounter! Here is my true crow story: One winter, many years ago, I was priviledged to witness crows and squirrels appearing to collaborate to successfully topple the "critter-proof" bird feeder in my parents backyard! My father redesigned his odd-looking, original, ulta-elaborate bird-feeder every time one of these incredible, yet obvious, security breaches occured - two or three times a week. One day, I determined to see one of these "impossible" trespasses in progress, so I sat at the kitchen window, just ten feet away from the whole situation, and watched and waited. After not all that long of a time, I saw what was happening - the crows would weigh the feeder down, so the squirrels could leap close enough to finish the job, and scatter its contents over the ground!
I was looking for more about "singularity" in physics and what came up on the google search perplexed and facinated me, all over again:
Google Search: Singularity
Can individuals and humankind approach the singular historical time of Ultimate Technological advancement - and live to know it? In our shamanic school we study as many cutting edge teachings in as many fields as possible, because our way is one of traveling all ways inward and outward. Some of us also practice intentional "wonder" and relentless curiosity as a method of altering brain wave patterns and conciousness and entering "shamanic states of conciousness" for our dream and journeying adventures and discoveries. Physics has speculatively, tentatively, opened new fluctuating "holes" for encountering the existence of singularity within each - macro to micro - spacetime event in this universe!
Today, I took a leap back from the quantum mechanics behind the magic membranes of all-that-is, to enjoy an arthropodic splash around some websites devoted to the marine worlds of earth. Maybe, I just wanted to see what was up with the crabs! Last night we had our first major snowstorm, and I was remembering how much I loved those childhood visits to the seashore. Those memories were warming my heart as I sat back and explored some websites designed especially for children, or even for childlike crabby curmudgeons:
I am navigating towards barely the middle of a recent survey of my books on physics-frontiers and psychophysics, and the M-superstringed holey-ness of everything is more and more getting my humble, amazed attention. Here is a place on the web I was looking at that has a simple, little diagram:
URL: Cambridge Relativity: Quantum Gravity
I went web voyaging looking for some information on what is happening with the search for a fleeting signiture of a graviton leaving our universe for extra-dimensional realms, and I got enjoyably stuck for a while at Infoplease which I would recommend as (my kind of) medium of entertainment! Here is a fun looking CERN site, too: Origins - Looking Into the Search for Beginnings.
I have been reading with interest the posts at RealClimate.org, so I am simply recommending it here to all who have an interest in climate change and what some climate scientists have to add to the media and entertainment coverage of climate change topics and theories. Reader participation is invited, within the strictest of guidelines, and the writers are all volunteers who seem to have an interest in presenting balanced, research-supported views. It is syndicated via RSS feed.
I hope everyone has seen this marvelous item by now! But just in case any folks are still out and about shopping for a thoughtful, large, somewhat unusual holiday gift, or about to purchase a small airplane, for themselves or a loved one, here is a URL of interest at CNN:
Airplane parachute!
I can hardly believe that Ballistic Recovery Systems is already marketing this fantastical invention as standard equipment for small aircraft, and are designing much larger versions - and, they are already being sued for a time the device failed to work! Whenever I next go out shopping for a personal airplane, I intend to make sure I get "one of those, please" included in the package!
This finding of "infant" galaxies to study, seems to be an extreme example of the common experience of being startled by something or someone close by, while gazing off at the horizon - then realizing who or what just jumped out at you was the object (or subject) you had been searching the distances for. I opine that the discovery game will never be over in any field of science - there will always be these shocking, delightful, surprises!
I am realizing this personal blog is more about the philosophy of science than any one or more of the sciences, and about new and alternative perspectives, rather than the "hard" or even "softer" conventional sciences. I hope any readers will forgive me, if I stick around here with this blog a while longer even though I step across the lines - I like this place so far!
The most interesting article I read last night, was this:
There are tougher pollutant standards and more world-wide studies of climate changes, and there are many individuals, groups, and agencies seeming to do their best, in a wide variety of ways, to bring our environment into sustainable compliance with economically sensible standards - but our earth's environment includes all of its inhabitants and groups (and groups of groups) and the tasks become increasingly complex. It appears to be getting more and more difficult to reach agreements on how to decide upon, enforce, and live by workable standards, as well as prevent and heal environmental wounds. In the meanwhile, the troubles continue, causing more distress. . .
