heathervescent

Future of Space Travel Analogy

The breakthrough came this morning:

Birds are to the Earth as Humans are to Space.

The analogy is not as simple as it may seem. There is a new Nature report out describing a type of internal GPS/internal avian magnetic compass that birds use to navigate their migrations.

Wouldn't it be cool (and perhaps it is necessary) for humans to create/develop a similar sense to navigate to cosmos?

Energy Cornfield

I've been doing a lot of thinking about green energy and environmentalism. I hate to admit it, but when someone starts talking to me about green business, sustainability or green energy, my eyes glaze over and I stop considering them a serious individual (with a few very rare exceptions for a few of my extraordinary friends). The whole green energy/conservationism/savetheworldbandwagon makes me sick. It's hard for me to see it as something other than a bunch of white $$shame trying to save the world but only from their worldview/valueset.

I've felt very conflicted (and wrong and bad) about this attitude, wondering if I'm anti-conservation/green? Maybe it's just my contrarian tendencies. Is it about control? (I don't want anyone telling me how or where I should get my energy or how to use it, thank you very much.) But here's the thing - I actually think conservation and reducing energy use is the exact opposite direction that we as a human species should be going.

It hit me this week. Energy conservation and the development of solar and wind energies is akin to caloric restriction. Sure, it has been scientifically proven to help you live longer, but you certainly can't be a body builder on it. Nor can you express your human potential on it. (Unless that is living long enough for the Singularity - a noble cause in it's own, but one I care not to achieve.) Sure solar and wind will give us some energy, but they just help us put off dealing with peak oil. The amount of energy in oil is so highly concentrated and it is so easily chemically manipulated. We are not going to stop using oil and coal before we use them up no matter how much solar, wind and bio-fuel energies are available.

Based on my studying and my gut feelings, it is CRITICAL that we have excessive amounts of free/cheap energy to evolve to the next level. It is the difference between hunter/gatherer existence, and the Iowas cornfields I drove through this afternoon. With excessive amounts cheap energy many many things will become possible and be invented that can not possibly exist today.

It is the difference between an outdoor cooking fire and the electric plug in your wall that your electronic device "breathes" from.

I'm not saying we shouldn't develop wind, solar or vegetable based energy: we should, but I do not believe that these methods of energy capture/harnessing will be the difference between the metaphorical hunter/gatherer and cornfields of Iowa. Those energy models will merely maintain the existing paradigm. (And they will only prolong our dealing with peak oil. We're gonna use all the oil in this earth sooner or later.) Which is fine, but not something I am particular interested in. I'm focused on blowing past our current place in time/space/culture/history (not maintaining it) and creating the path to the future.

Analogies:

• Caloric Restriction is to Solar/Wind/Bio Energy as Best Life Possible is to Human evolution/paradigm shift
• Fire is to Hunter/Gatherer as Electricity is to Agriculture as Cheap usable Energy is to the next human paradigm shift (space? singularity?)
• Solar/wind energy is to aspirin as Energy is to broken arm

Ps. Lainie, Evoamo, Hippy Steve - forgive me for this post. I still love you all and your greening ways!

What does the World Want?

Do you know what the world wants?

How about the earth?

How about the United States? What are our goals as a nation?

I've been thinking about these things since I started my first grad class, World Futures. People have so many assumptions about what they think is right or correct or the way to do things. Today I read an article about biofuels that posited that increased focus on biofuels would increase poverty and hunger.

The only reason global warming is a problem is because it might be a problem for humans. It might make the earth not optimal for the human race (and possibly a bunch of other animals). But in the scheme of the universe, does this really matter?  I mean, what does the earth want?

Let's assume that the earth wants life on and around it. If that's that case, then it really doesn't matter in the long run whether or not an animal (human, plants, etc) is extinct now or later. Everything dies. The human race will cease to exist at some point in the future. Life will continue. But what kind of life does the earth want? What kind of intelligent life (if any)?

I often think about pollution and destruction of the environment in the same frame of mind as ingesting drugs or other "poisonous" items. To much drugs of any kind can often kill you, or do irreversible damage. That sucks for the person who damaged themself, but if they survive, they will still live, still have experiences, life. Life wins. If they kill themselves by drug usage, well then, their life transforms and lives on another way - sometimes that energy lives on in their stories.

Recently I have become obsessed with economics and have started reading copious quantities of financial reports and documentation. I started wondering, what is the goal of our nation - the United States. And I sadly could not identify any goal. It made me think that perhaps our past goals (set by our founding fathers) have been achieved, and we are in the state of confusion, waffling, figuring out where to go and what to do next. We've gotten our priorities confused, gotten bit by the hierarchy bug, forgotten our values, taken drugs.

This makes me very sad. And I wonder, is it possible (yes, of course the possibility it there, but how high the probability is it) for a country, a nation, to have goals?

And if a nation can, what about a world?

A New Direction

Earlier this year I decided to follow-up on one of my long-term dreams: to go back to school.

When I went to college over a decade ago, my original plan was to go straight through and get my Ph.d and go on to write, teach and research. The only problem was - I had no idea what I wanted to focus on. That is why I focused my academic time on learning to communicate. I had many thoughts and idea and understandings of the world that I found difficult to communicate. With words, with pictures.

How does one communicate unclear baby ideas? With poetry.

So I thought I wanted to be a poet. I learned to communicate with metaphors and similes and like/as comparisons. Mathematical propositions. 

At the center of my inquire was understanding and perspectives. I realized early on that people have a wide variety of many different perspectives. And all perspectives were valid - although some were more universally accepted than others. Some were thought of as right or wrong. And I too thought some things were right and wrong. But there is a difference between right and correct.

I wanted to understand these perspectives. Where did they come from? How did they occur? Why was something correct or right? Why did people who spoke certain language think and act very different from people who speak another language?

The words we speak (or are taught) partially make up our worldview - our perspective. I wanted to immerse myself in as many different perspectives as possible; to learn about other perspectives and my own, but also to remind myself that perspective itself is a perspective. To learn the language of languages. Of cognitive mindsetculture based on the communication methods.

This is where I started from. I call them my "armchair curiosities". I'm obsessed with possibilities and the probability of those possibilities. And how people - us humans - interact with technology: creating it, interfacing with it, change it, is changed by it, evolves by/with/because of it. And the future.

I've been pondering going back to school for about a year. But what discipline would I study? (That is the problem with traditional universities - locking you into a field.) I kept coming back to cognitive neuroscience. I'm fascinated with out brains and perception. How we create our world based on accurate (and false) sensory data. But I wasn't satisfied with just that idea. It leaves out my passion for technology.

Then I heard about Singularity University. So I applied. And out of over 1200 applications, I got on the waitlist. For one of 40 spots.

I'm terrified to hear I won't get in (this year). Because I've realized how important this direction is to me. But it's validation enough to be on the waitlist (for now).

This is the direction I most dream and am terrified to go. Straight into the future. To understanding and creating the future. To helping us - people - understand and evolve ourselves - using the best that technology can offer.

The Nobel Prize

Do you know how the Nobel prize started? It was the dream of a dead man.

"The whole of my remaining realizable estate shall be dealt with in the following way: the capital, invested in safe securities by my executors, shall constitute a fund, the interest on which shall be annually distributed in the form of prizes to those who, during the preceding year, shall have conferred the greatest benefit on mankind. The said interest shall be divided into five equal parts, which shall be apportioned as follows: one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery or invention within the field of physics; one part to the person who shall have made the most important chemical discovery or improvement; one part to the person who shall have made the most important discovery within the domain of physiology or medicine; one part to the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction; and one part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses. The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiology or medical works by the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting. It is my express wish that in awarding the prizes no consideration be given to the nationality of the candidates, but that the most worthy shall receive the prize, whether he be Scandinavian or not."
 - From here.

Goodbye Grandfather

Death has been hitting me with the left punches recently, so I wasn't entirely surprised to get the phone call from my mom earlier today telling me grandfather passed away. Not the grandfather I just visited in Iowa. Here's the "funny" part.

As I was driving out to my Aunt's house in Riverside Saturday morning I thought of Grandpa Norm (who lived out in Palm Springs). I was not close to him and had not been close for some time. In the car, while driving on the 60, I heard his voice. I saw him in the hospital room. I saw things about his life I had never seen before. I understood his pain. His life challenges and why he drowned himself in alcohol in his later years. Silent tears ran down my cheeks as I forgave him and told him he could go. That I held no more grudges and I wished him peace.

It was 10:26am and I noted the time, because I knew his passing would be soon if it had not already happened.

Preparing for Death

I traveled to Iowa to visit my grandparents who are in their late 80s and starting to have a few problems. I wanted to spend time with them as you never know what might happen or when they might go. I wanted to see them while I still could. But the universe gave me a punch out of left field.

In a cafe in Austin, my mom told me she had been diagnosed with a rare very deadly form of cancer: primary peritoneal cancer. Everyone who has been diagnosed with it has died from it. Average lifespan after diagnosis is 2 years - maybe 5, 10 at the max.

The heaviness of this has been sinking in the past couple days. All this mental preparation to say goodbye to my grandparents, to see them, tell them things, hear things from them, spend time with them, my possible last goodbye - I am re-adjusting to my mom. The good thing, is that I feel very good about my relationship with her. There is nothing unsaid, nothing I am concerned about. But damn, I thought there would be more time.

I have seen death, so I'm not afraid - for myself or her or anyone.

But thinking about the end, is making me think about certain things differently. I often consider my own death, and what I want to be doing when it visits its final kiss. If I died today, sure there are a lot of things I will miss out on doing, being and accomplishing - but I've had a good life, I've done everything I've wanted to up to now. But moving beyond today - priorities shift.

Enlightenment

I've been recently wondering if I'm enlightened. I mean, of course if you think you are - you can't be. And even if you are - you're not all the time. It's not like it's a state that can be attained and held onto. It's fleeting moments that grow longer in time as one becomes more enlightened. And there are always more perspectives, and wider understandings and unraveling of opposites along with the solidifying of specifics.

So am I enlightened? Well yeah - doh. Will I become more enlightened? again - yeah - doh. And will I become my stupid self - yes again! Hooray for being human!

Indian View

When ships first came to the new world, I was told a story where the local indians couldn't see the ships on the horizon. They didn't have the context or worldview to actually "see" the ships.

The indians were on their own in the "new world". While Europe had risen and burned and conquered and been conquered, tribes in the Americas grew and developed with no contact.

What if we (the people on this earth) are like the Indians? Developing in a vacuum - alone in our immediate neighborhood. Unable to see the "discoverers" from another land because our worldview does not permit the recognition of a different pinta, nina and santa maria?

What shock it would be when the ships docked in the harbor?

Religion = Imagination

Interesting article theory on why religion evolved:

In a piece reported on in New Scientist, Maurice Bloch has proposed another basis for religion: imagination. Because we can project ourselves and imagine the "transcendental" relation in social and personal relationships, we can imagine that there are agents not visible or present, he claims. The paper is also a good historical review of theories of religion, and makes the point that "religion" is not well defined as a topic of investigation of explanation.

From Evolving Thoughts

And the dreams came true

I recently went to a workshop where the focus was on how to get your heart's desire and manifesting your dreams. I had leave after 30 minutes of it because I realized that I no longer needed to learn how to have my heart's desire. (I wrote my process for doing this in 2005.) Instead of sitting in a conference center for 2 days, writing down my dreams and how I might go about realizing them, I went out and did it.

That was the trip to Salvation Mountain.

That morning, before I went to the workshop, I stopped at drugstore to buy a toothbrush (I had forgotten to pack mine.) At the checkout counter were these packs of green M&Ms specially marketed for Valentines Day (which was over). I realized that here was the manifestation of one of my childhood dreams. You see, the green M&M's were always my favorite - and it was my dream to have a package of only green m&m's. Here it is - almost 30 years later - my dream come true. So I bought the package.

Checkmark: childhood dream come true.

Which made me start thinking - what happens when all your dreams come true? Is that life Bo-ring? Do you dream more dreams? What happens when you can have anything you dream? It sounds like a magical place to be. To conjure up whatever I want. And yet, that's the position I'm in right now. So what do I want? More bigger dreams? More harder challenges? More proving grounds?

There are always more dreams. For me at least. There will be challenges associated with those dreams. And I've just jumped my most recent hurdle (thank you to my ruthless ego). I've proved myself. I can make all my dreams a reality.

So what is beyond dreams?  *** *******

---

ps. and don't go thinking that all these dreams will be destroyed. I have already had all my dreams destroyed. That was my first experience with dreams. It was destroyed dreams that would never come true. And then there was the time where all my dreams came true, but then my dreams changed.

A shot of faith and inspiration

Just watch this.

Rising to the front

I've recently become obsessed with Gwen Stefani. I've got the beat of Hollaback Girl tattoed in my brain, mostly because of DJ Schmoli and A+D's mashups and the three performances I've produced with Gwen mashups: The Original Hollaback Thriller, Hollaback Thriller Redux, and Hollaback Headhunter.

I was often surprised to find out a song I liked and heard on the radio was hers. What really made her stand out in my brain though, was when I saw/heard her song "wind it up".  I don't usually see music videos, so just seeing it was a major accomplishment for me. What I heard blew my mind. I thought it was a mash-up, but it was so obviously her song taking from various inspirations. Brazilian batucada,  musical mash-up with a club beat and a rap ripple going through the song. I was blown away - this was the most innovate music by a single artist since I heard Suba.

I've started listening to her entire discography and I continue to be impressed, inspired you might even say, so much so, that I'm making Gwen my role model for 2008. I'll add her to girl crew of Pippi, Aeon, and Ivy. I need to add some pop-bling to my image and she's the perfect polish.

Evolve /=/ Die

The universe wants you to evolve. To do so, you must die. Therefore you can choose to evolve or die and in evolving you will die. However, instead of an existential death at the end of the line, you will be reborn and become something else.

Personally, I prefer to know what I am killing and choose my death and it's time. (Hey, we're good friends my death and I.) It's what I become that constantly surprises and terrifies me.

Pink Goth Powerpoints and Brenda Laurel

I'm working on a pink goth powerpoint business plan. Who would have thought this was possible and that I would do it, but yeah, it kicks ass and sometimes I love my job. Part of this love is running across Brenda Laurel again. Man, she just totally rocks. I'm adding her to my list of inspiring kick ass women I want to be like.

ps. geek dinner recap is coming. It was a blast!

Unicorns and Religion

How did I miss the Invisible Pink Unicorns? (All this time I have been talking about invisible pink elephants...) Unicorns on wikipedia. And more invisible pink unicorns?

The Invisible Pink Unicorn logo represents atheism.
It is a fusion between the mathematical void symbol and the stylized representation of an unicorn.
The void symbol (empty set Ø) is an allusion to nothingness and in this case meaning "no faith" or "no god". The unicorn is a reference to a kind of story that atheists often tell to make their point.

Very delightful - but I am far far far from being an atheist. In fact, I had a delightful conversation with two Christian missionarys when I was in Sedona. The part that freaked me out the most (but really didn't freak me out that much) was that I could completely understand and agree with most of what they were saying. In fact, I live my life pretty much exactly the way they live their life. The big exception, I don't think Jesus is the only bridge. The other exception, I have no interest in going to heaven (or hell for that matter) I have my eye set on something .... else. The other exception, I don't quote from the bible (although I was quite interested in what they were quoted and totally understood the point of the quotes).

I do believe that I speak a different "religion", "spiritual" language. The problem is, I can speak many languages... but people don't all speak my language. That's ok, because I have a direct link/line to "G-d" which I call something different.

My favorite part of the conversation was when we were talking about good and evil and they were telling me how deceptive Satan was and I said, exactly, the whole concept of good and evil is a deception (because well it is). It is a method to distract us and get us to play on sides against each other - when really we're all one big thing. The deception is that there is no good and evil (and yet, there is most definitely good and evil).

Anyway, talking with them crystallized my possible explanation of this paradox (at least in my mind). Back to the circle with a dot in the center. Or, when you peel all the layers of the onion- where is the onion? (ps, it's the layers)

Angsty = Awesome

So last night I made Kaliya (who was in town visiting) meet me at LA Angst. I dug out two of my old journals 10 minutes before I left. One was the infamous Brazil journal - which is green and falling apart. The other was a journal I occasionally write and give updates to (it was started in 1991 and there are years between entries) - hey, who says I have to have only 1 journal? I mean, I've got this blog, my paper journal, my nav log, my GTD notebook and a variety of other notebooks. Anyway, I even found some poetry stuffed into the brazil journal (amazing because I burned all my love letters and most of my writing 2 years ago)

Here's the line up from last night. It was a total blast! Thank you to Leah (top o the list) for organizing it.

LeahPeah

Mocha Momma

Katronika

Redleather

West Coast Grrlie Blather

Heathervescent

Yay for us!

Recapitulation - why - a Hofstader story

Recapitulation is an exercise to recall, review, release, and recharge energy.  It rids a person of assumptions and preconceptions. Recapitulation is remembering or more precisely, reviving events and experiences. [Source]

I've alluded many times to Douglas Hofstader's new book, I am a Strange Loop. One of the reasons this book fascinates me so much, is that much of Hofstader's descriptions, describe almost exactly knowledge I learned through other sources.

But first, I'll come clean. I studied and practiced the teachings of mystic G.I. Gurdjieff actively for 5 years and in a school for at least 3 of those. (Much of what I know of Wilbur's Integral Theory reminds me of those Gurdjieff lessons.) Then I flowed into Aikido and practiced martial movements and paratheatrical rituals. One fine Berkeley day, I was coming back from aikido class and on a whim, I stopped in the temporary Berkeley Library. I frequent bookstore more than libraries. I had no idea what to look for. Them I remembered someone told me about some teachings of don juan. It was the last person I talked to at college. I had no idea who the author was, so I started looking up titles. I couldn't find that particular book, but I found the section that included other books by the same author. I picked two at random and took them on vacation with me. The author turned out to be Carlos Castaneda, and the first book I read, was The Fire from Within. (Shamanism was not new to me. Another fluke library stop, more than 10 years previous got 13 year old Heather obsessed with Lynn V Andrews. I accepted these stories as the myths and fairytales I had read.) I read the stories with a skeptics disbelief - the activities in his books are truly impossible, but I found myself agreeing more and more on the explanation and belief structure. It was so similar to my own, I realized that I was holding in my hands a book I would write had this book not been written. Rather than get angry (like I did at Taoism 10 years previous) I wanted to learn more. I gave myself a year to experience these impossible things. That year was the first of many years of practice and studying personal freedom - true freedom.

So what does this have to do with Hofstader?

Much of the more difficult concepts I learn (and try to explain) about true freedom Hofstader has explained with the ease of mathematical terms, analogies and stories. He easily explains Plato's cave - much more eloquently than Plato did. Here's an excerpt he uses to explain our warehouse (of symbols) and I can use it to show the importance of recapitulation.

(book excerpt after the jump)

Thoughts Percolating

Friday I was hit with a big does of project creativity working on the various unicorn forms for my burning man camp. I was mocking out the 7ft metal structure, when staring out into the yard, I spied a pair of sawhorses. And the vision of transformation hit me. Or rather a vision that transformed the sawhorses into unicorns hit me. So I mocked it all out and proceeded to plan to work in wood.

That put on a trip down memory lane. Back to shop class in 8th grade (I was one of 4 girls) and metal working class in 7th grade. It was great fun to map out the plans and make templates/patterns. I imagined this was similar in a way to what Suz did when she was a pattern maker. And I could see the challenges in doing this work. Then I spent 2 hours at home depot gathering materials. I realized how thankful I am that I do not have to cut the trees myself or plane them for smooth edges. And I realized the amount of work it took to be a carpenter back in the day. You had to have tools, building knowledge, wood and tree knowledge (like do you want to map out your template against or with the grain of the wood?) and which wood is best for the thing you are working on?  And then of course my mind wandered to Jesus. (Disclaimer: do not think I am going all Christian on you, I am not - it's just the Jesus Year, ok.) And I was thinking about being a carpenter was about creating. Starting from a basic idea and some basic materials, a carpenter makes real an idea - cabinets, furniture, a house.

And the act of creating, the practice of creating something over and over gives one a lot of power and insight, not to mention skills.

A comment on my suicide post a few weeks ago. There is a follow-up rattling around in my head called, the human is dead, long live the human. When the human sheds its form and becomes something different and at the same time retains human shape.

Which reminds me of detachment. Recapitulation. Self-observation. The Confessional. The act of Confession, practicing Buddhist detachment, the warrior's method of recapitulation, and Gurdjieff's self-observations methods are all methods to the same end. Awareness of the many facets of our personality, (bonus points for understanding that others have many same and different facets), detaching from those facets as our ultimate identity (realizing the collection of facets is not You), and forgive oneself when those personalities manifest themselves to us/in us again.

Hey, wasn't that one of the roles of the pantheon of Gods? (I am just remembering an idea I had about this.) It was because the Gods/desses were making you do it, or you were under the influence of that Goddess, or you pissed one of them off. The Gods gave standard metaphors for a  personality characteristics that you and I have. It's a facet inside us. The gods and goddesses are in_side us. But they are not us. Yes, we are puppets of the gods, until we are master of ourselves, and then the gods are the puppets.

Anyway, enough on this subject for Sunday morning. I've got some projects to manifest.

Kiva in Action + Kiva extended

I've been watching Kiva for a while now. My pal Kareem first told me about it last year and I checked into it and then promptly forgot about it. Well, I didn't really forget about it. I started thinking about it in a new way.

You see, I love science - scientific research - scientific breakthroughs. So Kiva got me started thinking about a way for scientists to fund their research with private microinvestments - similar to what Kiva is doing. Now, this mental masturbation distracted me from Kiva itself, and I started mapping out what kind of site it would take to set up a Kiva structure for scientific research. Here's a story about a researching who went and found independent research monies (thanks S for the link). And then there is Moller, who has been working on his dream for a long time. I think this is a great idea, and I definately want to make it happen. So if you want to collaborate with me (hi M!) then let's talk.

But back to Kiva. Kareem recently reminded me about the site again and this time, instead of getting sidetracked in my own ideas, I executed. For less than the price of dinner, I could make someone's dream come true, I could help the world and Kiva made it possible for me to do it. I started looking through the borrowers. I wanted to pick one where my amount would be the final amount and then the loan funded. I found Olga, who is a furniture maker. My $25 was the final amount to fund her $1000 loan.

As I was looking through borrowers, another story caught my eye. Maria lives in Mexico and runs a grocery store. She is 1 year younger than me and has 8 children! Wow. What a totally different life. I contributed $25 to her loan (which is about to be funded).

To realize that $50 can make a difference in Olga and Maria's lives make me ... grateful for being able to help. Make me realize that I really am in a privileged position and I must do everything I can to raise the pyramid from the bottom - not scramble to the top.

You too can make a different. With a tiny amount of money. $25 is so little. Please join me and help raise the pyramid from the bottom. Because in doing so, you raise yourself as well.