म.स.

starry night

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflecting Vincent's eyes of China blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hands

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one as
beautiful as you

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
A silver thorn on a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will

ολεολεολε

Nosferatu

?

John Whitney

Computers were originally developed as part of the British and American World War II defense efforts. They were first known as "Turing Machines" after Alan Turing who invented them to break Nazi codes -- the film of Andrew Hodges' biography was recently broadcast as Breaking the Code with Derek Jacobi portraying the inventor. The young John Whitney worked in the Lockheed Aircraft Factory during the war and while he was working with high-speed missile photography, he was technically adept enough to realize that the targeting elements in such weapons as bomb sites and anti-aircraft guns calculated trajectories and produced finely-controlled linear numerical equivalents, which could potentially be used for plotting graphics or guiding movements in peacetime artistic endeavors. A decade would pass before he was able to buy some of these analog computer mechanisms as "war-surplus" and construct with them his own "cam machine," which pioneered the concept of "motion control."

In the meantime, Whitney had made about two dozen films in more or less traditional animation. Among these were: in 8mm, a time-lapse of an eclipse and several drawn Variations, in 16mm two Film Exercises accompanied by electronic music composed by Whitney with a system of pendulums he had invented, and about 10 abstract musical visualizations using an oil-wipe instrument he had also invented as well as three 35mm cartoons for the UPA studios. He also did various commercial assignments including the title design for Hitchcock's feature Vertigo (in association with Saul Bass), and the preparation (in association with Charles Eames) of a seven-screen presentation for the Buckminster Fuller Dome in Moscow.

With his computerized motion-control set-up, Whitney could produce a variety of innovative designs and metamorphoses of text and still images, which proved very successful in advertising and titling of commercial projects. By 1960 Whitney prepared a sample reel of these and other effects he could produce, and solicited work for his Motion Graphics, Inc. company. This company kept him so busy he did not have time to make personal films using the computerized motion-control set-up. His sample reel was artfully edited and ended with a lovely final image of a lissajous curve multiplied dozens of times, to appear twisting in waves, suggesting the time-lapse of a blossoming flower. The reel was released as Catalog and became a popular classic of 1960's psychedelica. John Whitney's younger brother James, who had collaborated with him on the early Variations and Film Exercises, used John's cam machine to shoot his fabulous film Lapis. By multiplying the hundreds of dots in his hand-drawn original artwork into thousands of dots he described the most complex mandalas writhing with life.

Not all of the motion-control effects business for Whitney's "cam machine" ventures went in his favor, however. One of the possibilities demonstrated in Catalog is the slit-scan effect. Someone else duplicated the effect for the feature 2001. Ironically, Whitney had submitted to them a proposal for a monolith as a computer-generated effect that would have looked different from anything else in the film. He was turned down.

Whitney had an opportunity to work on the new high-powered digital computers between 1966 and 1969, when he was awarded a fellowship as artist-in-residence at IBM. Jack Citron programmed the IBM 360 Digital computers for him. His first computer generated film is rarely seen, but delightful. Whitney titled the film Homage to Rameau not only because Rameau wrote the baroque music heard on the soundtrack, but also to reference Rameau's book Treatise on Harmony. This text focused the direction of Whitney's aesthetic strivings, culminating in his 1980 book Digital Harmony.

At approximately the same time that Whitney worked at IBM in California, other artist-in-residence programs in the East allowed Stan Vanderbeek and Lilian Schwartz to work with Ken Knowlton at Bell Labs. Vanderbeek's Poem Fields mainly uses his clever texts as subject matter, and Schwartz's abstract music films, though colorful and well-paced, seem too similar, hampered by the limitations of the Beflix program. By contrast, John Whitney's computer films grew continually more intricate in their exploration of a genuine aesthetic goal: the establishment of a secure basis for harmonic events in audio-visual presentation.

In each of John's next five films [Permutations (1968), Osaka 1-2-3 (1971), Matrix I (1971), Matrix II (1971), Matrix III (1972), Arabesque (1975)], he demonstrated the principle of "harmonic progression." For example, in Arabesque (programmed by Larry Cuba), Whitney experimented with the eccentricities of Islamic architecture, which, though ultimately harmonic, contain many characteristic reverse curves in its embellishments. Whitney also made three documentary films on the subject of digital harmony. In 1979 he completed Experiments in Motion Graphics. His 1973 Hex Demo for a lecture at Cranbrook was included on a laserdisc of his works issued by Pioneer in 1984.He also completed in 1993 A Personal Search for the Complementarity of Music and Visual Art which is available through Pyramid Film and Video.

In the later 1980s, Whitney concentrated on developing a computerized instrument on which one could compose visual and musical output simultaneously in real time. His first piece on this new instrumentation, which was improved and updated constantly, appeared as Spirals in 1987. Although the compositions were linked to the particular computer set-up, and defied many attempts to copy them onto film and video, Whitney continued to compose new visual-music pieces until his death in 1995. The Moon Drum series in 12 sections based on Native American ceremonial art was most notable. Although less brilliant than the original computer monitor display, a satisfactory video version of Moon Drum was released.

John Whitney's active filmmaking career endured over 55 years, and 40 of those years were devoted to computer work. This is a remarkable record for any independent filmmaker, but particularly astonishing for the continued quality and vision of Whitney's films.

καταστροφολογία και το νησί του Πάσχα

Κάθε φορά που έπρεπε να έρθει το τέλος του κόσμου...

31/12/999
Χίλια χρόνια μετά τη γέννηση του Χριστού, το τέλος σύμφωνα με τα απόκρυφα Ευαγγέλια.
20/2/1524
Ένας κατακλυσμός θα αφάνιζε τον κόσμο σύμφωνα με τον Γερμανό Γιόχανες Στέφλερ.
19/5/1719
Ο Ελβετός μαθηματικός Ζακ Μπερνούλι προέβλεψε τη σύγκρουση ενός κομήτη με τη Γη.
1732
Το τέλος του κόσμου που προέβλεψε ο Νοστράδαμος.
19/10/1814
Η Τζοάνα Σάουθκοτ προέβλεψε ότι εκείνη την ημέρα θα γεννούσε τον «δεύτερο Μεσσία» (και θα ερχόταν το τέλος του κόσμου).
3/4/1843, 7/7/1843, 21/3/1844, 22/10/1844
Ο Αμερικανός Γουίλιαμ Μίλερ ανακοίνωσε το τέλος του κόσμου σε όλες αυτές τις ημερομηνίες.
2/10/1914
Η Ημέρα της Κρίσης σύμφωνα με τον Τσαρλς Τέιζ Ράσελ, τον ιδρυτή των Μαρτύρων του Ιεχωβά. Δε συνέβη τίποτα. Οι οπαδοί του προέβλεψαν το τέλος του κόσμου το 1925, το 1941, το 1975 και τέλος στις 2/10/1984.
17/12/1919
Ο σεισμολόγος και μετεωρολόγος Αλμπέρτο Πόρτα προέβλεψε μια μοιραία σύνοδο 6 πλανητών.
24/5/1954
Στις 18 Μαΐου εμφανίστηκαν ρωγμές στο Κολοσσαίο (κάτω). Σύμφωνα με μια αρχαία δοξασία, «Η Ρώμη και ολόκληρος ο κόσμος θα είναι ασφαλείς όσο το Κολοσσαίο είναι όρθιο». Κάποιοι προέβλεψαν την ημερομηνία, και χιλιάδες προσκυνητές πήγαν στον Πάπα, για να ζητήσουν άφεση αμαρτιών.
28/10/1992
Ο αιδεσιμότατος Λι Γιανγκ Λιμ, της ιεραποστολικής εκκλησίας του Τάμι, στη Νότια Κορέα, ανακοίνωσε ότι ο Χριστός είχε ζητήσει να συγκεντρωθούν 144.000 πιστοί τα μεσάνυχτα εκείνης της ημέρας, για να τους σώσει από τον Αρμαγεδδώνα (την τελική μάχη ανάμεσα στο Καλό και το Κακό). Περισσότερα από 100.000 άτομα παρουσιάστηκαν σε περίπου 200 φονταμενταλιστικές εκκλησίες. Όμως ο Λι Γιανγκ Λιμ συνελήφθη, γιατί καταχράστηκε 4 εκατομμύρια δολάρια που συγκεντρώθηκαν από δωρεές των πιστών.
7/1999
Ένα δεύτερο τέλος του κόσμου που προέβλεψε ο Νοστράδαμος.
11/1999
Διατυπώθηκε η εικασία ότι ένα πείραμα ατομικής φυσικής στα Brookhaven National Laboratories των ΗΠΑ θα μπορούσε να οδηγήσει στη δημιουργία μιας μαύρης τρύπας που θα καταβρόχθιζε τον κόσμο.
31/12/1999
Η ημερομηνία του Millennium bug (τα συστήματα πληροφορικής θα έπρεπε να κρασάρουν).
19/1/2038
Στις 05:14:07 ώρα Ελλάδας προβλέπεται ένα καινούριο Millennium bug (που αυτή τη φορά θα έχει να κάνει μόνο με το λειτουργικό σύστημα Unix)

Η Νήσος του Πάσχα

Πριν από χίλια χρόνια, σε ένα απομονωμένο νησί 3.600 χλμ. ανατολικά της Χιλής, στη Νήσο του Πάσχα, άκμασε ένας πολιτισμός που σκάλισε εκατοντάδες γιγαντιαίους ογκόλιθους σε σχήμα ανθρώπινου κεφαλιού. Έπειτα, ξαφνικά, αυτός ο πολιτισμός εξαφανίστηκε.
Γιατί; Θα μπορούσε να συμβεί και σε εμάς; «Η Νήσος του Πάσχα είναι το τέλειο παράδειγμα της κοινωνίας που αυτοκαταστρέφεται, γιατί εκμεταλλεύεται υπερβολικά το περιβάλλον», λέει ο Τζάρεντ Ντάιαμοντ στο βιβλίο Κατάρρευση. «Ο παραλληλισμός με το σύγχρονο κόσμο είναι πολύ ισχυρός. Χάρη στην παγκοσμιοποίηση, όλες οι χώρες της Γης μοιράζονται σήμερα τους ίδιους πόρους και αλληλοεπηρεάζονται, όπως έκαναν οι φυλές στη Νήσο του Πάσχα. Αυτό το νησί ήταν ένα απομονωμένο κομμάτι γης στη μέση του Ειρηνικού Ωκεανού. Όταν οι κάτοικοι του νησιού άρχισαν να αντιμετωπίζουν δυσκολίες, δεν υπήρχε άλλο μέρος για να πάνε ούτε κάποιος δίπλα τους που θα μπορούσε να τους βοηθήσει. Το ίδιο μπορεί να συμβεί και σε εμάς, στη Γη. Η κατάρρευση της κοινωνίας της Νήσου του Πάσχα είναι ένα παράδειγμα, η χειρότερη εικασία για αυτό που μπορεί να μας επιφυλάσσει το μέλλον»

tik

MOON

Moons may bow to planets in terms of size, but in character they often outshine their stolid parents. The named moons of the solar system outnumber planets by more than 20 to 1, and they display a remarkable diversity. There are fully fledged worlds such as Titan, as complex as any planet. There are possible havens for life, such as the ice-crusted water world Europa. New mysteries surround even the smallest satellites, most recently the apparent flying saucers orbiting Saturn.

This year it will be four centuries since Galileo discovered Jupiter's four large satellites, at a stroke quintupling the number of moons then known to humanity.

1. IO
Pockmarked with sulphurous pits, bathed in intense radiation and shaken by constant volcanic eruptions, Io is the fiery hell of the solar system.

2. Iapetus
Even a cursory glance at Saturn's moon Iapetus reveals it to be an oddball. For one thing it is two-toned: one half is black, the other shining white.

3. Europa, Enceladus and Triton
The seemingly bleak icy surfaces of Europa, Enceladus and Triton are in fact among the most active landscapes in the solar system. They may even contain cosy habitats for living creatures.

4. Pan and Atlas
Pan and Atlas come straight from a 1950s B-movie. With a central bulge set inside a disc-like ridge, they bear an uncanny resemblance to your stereotypical flying saucers.

5. Nereid
An otherwise undistinguished satellite of Neptune, moderately lumpy and middling in size, Nereid travels on the most eccentric orbit of any moon in the solar system.

6. Titan
It is perhaps the strangest of all moons because it is so eerily familiar. The newly revealed face of Titan has the same weather-beaten features as Earth.

7. Earth's MOON
Scores of moons have been discovered within our solar system, yet Earth's companion still stands out as one of the most remarkable.

iF OUR solar system holds so many remarkable moons, then what strange satellite worlds might we find among the billions of planetary systems in the Milky Way? Perhaps there are temperate, habitable moons orbiting some giant exoplanets. We shouldn't expect to find them inhabited by intelligent life such as the furry Ewoks of Endor in Star Wars, but such moons may be among the most likely habitats for life in the universe.

On the face of it, detecting a moon around a planet orbiting a distant star seems like a spectacularly difficult task, but with a bit of luck today's technology may be able to do it. The best approach is to look for transits, in which an orbiting planet passes in front of its star, dimming the amount of light we detect on Earth. This method has already been used to find several planets, and it could indirectly reveal exomoons. As a moon orbits a planet, its gravity makes the planet move, speeding it up and slowing it down and so changing the timing and duration of transits.

The bigger the moon in relation to the planet, the bigger this effect. In one simulation, a planet with the mass of Neptune situated in the habitable zone of a star - not too hot, not too cold - was given a moon the size of Earth. This weighty moon would change the timing and duration of its planet's transits enough to be detectable by the Kepler planet-finding satellite, or even by ground-based telescopes. Such a large moon would also be able to hold onto a thick atmosphere, making it a prime spot for life.

READ MORE_____ http://www.newscientist.com/special/weird-worlds-solar-system-strangest-moons

Seven theories of everything

The "theory of everything" is one of the most cherished dreams of science. If it is ever discovered, it will describe the workings of the universe at the most fundamental level and thus encompass our entire understanding of nature. It would also answer such enduring puzzles as what dark matter is, the reason time flows in only one direction and how gravity works. Small wonder that Stephen Hawking famously said that such a theory would be "the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God".

But theologians needn't lose too much sleep just yet. Despite decades of effort, progress has been slow. Many physicists have confined themselves to developing "quantum gravity" theories that attempt to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity – a prerequisite for a theory of everything. But rather than coming up with one or two rival theories whose merits can be judged against the evidence, there is a profusion of candidates that address different parts of the problem and precious few clues as to which (if any) might turn out to be correct.

Here's a brief guide to some of the front runners.

String theory
This is probably the best known theory of everything, and the most heavily studied. It suggests that the fundamental particles we observe are not actually particles at all, but tiny strings that only "look" like particles to scientific instruments because they are so small.

What's more, the mathematics of string theory also rely on extra spatial dimensions, which humans could not experience directly.

These are radical suggestions, but many theorists find the string approach elegant and have proposed numerous variations on the basic theme that seem to solve assorted cosmological conundrums. However, they have two major challenges to overcome if they are to persuade the rest of the scientific community that string theory is the best candidate for a ToE.

First, string theorists have so far struggled to make new predictions that can be tested. So string theory remains just that: a theory.

Secondly, there are just too many variants of the theory, any one of which could be correct – and little to choose between them. To resolve this, some physicists have proposed a more general framework called M-theory, which unifies many string theories.

But this has its own problems. Depending how you set it up, M-theory can describe any of 10500 universes. Some physicists argue that this is evidence that there are multiple universes, but others think it just means the theory is untestable.

Loop quantum gravity
Although it hasn't had the same media exposure, loop quantum gravity is so far the only real rival to string theory.

The basic idea is that space is not continuous, as we usually think, but is instead broken up into tiny chunks 10-35 metres across. These are then connected by links to make the space we experience. When these links are tangled up into braids and knots, they produce elementary particles.

Loop quantum gravity has produced some tentative predictions of real-world effects, and has also shed some light on the birth of the universe. But its proponents have so far struggled to incorporate gravity into their theories. And as with string theory, a true experimental test is still some way off.

CDT
Causal dynamical triangulations looks pretty similar to loop quantum gravity at first glance. Just as loop quantum gravity breaks up space into tiny "building blocks", CDT assumes that space-time is split into tiny building blocks – this time, four-dimensional chunks called pentachorons.

The pentachorons can then be glued together to produce a large-scale universe – which turns out to have three space dimensions and one time dimension, just as the real one does. So far, so good, but there's a major drawback: CDT as it currently stands cannot explain the existence of matter.

Quantum Einstein gravity
This idea, proposed by Martin Reuter of the University of Mainz, Germany, takes a rather different tack.

Part of the problem with unifying gravity and quantum mechanics is what happens to gravity at small scales. The closer two objects are to each other, the stronger the gravitational attraction between them; but gravity also acts on itself, and as a result, at very small distances a feedback loop starts. According to conventional theories the force should then become ridiculously strong – which means there's something wrong with the conventional theories.

However, Reuter has come up with a way to generate a "fixed point": a distance below which gravity stops getting stronger. This could help solve the problem, and lead to a quantum theory of gravity.

Quantum graphity
All the theories above assume that space and time exist, and then try to build up the rest of the universe. Quantum graphity – the brainchild of Fotini Markopoulou of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues – tries to do away with them.

When the universe formed in the big bang, Markopoulou says, there was no such thing as space as we know it. Instead, there was an abstract network of "nodes" of space, in which each node was connected to every other. Very soon afterwards, this network collapsed and some of the nodes broke away from each other, forming the large universe we see today.

Internal relativity
Developed by Olaf Dreyer of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, internal relativity sets out to explain how general relativity could arise in a quantum world.

Every particle in the universe has a property called "spin", which can be loosely thought of as what happens to the particle when it is rotated. Dreyer's model imagines a system of spins existing independently of matter and arranged randomly. When the system reaches a critical temperature, the spins align, forming an ordered pattern.

Anyone actually living in the system of spins will not see them. All they see are their effects, which Dreyer has shown will include space-time and matter. He has also managed to derive Newtonian gravity from the model: however, general relativity has not yet emerged.

E8
In 2007 the physicist (and sometime surfer) Garrett Lisi made headlines with a possible theory of everything.

The fuss was triggered by a paper discussing E8, a complex eight-dimensional mathematical pattern with 248 points. Lisi showed that the various fundamental particles and forces known to physics could be placed on the points of the E8 pattern, and that many of their interactions then emerged naturally.

Some physicists heavily criticised the paper, while others gave it a cautious welcome. In late 2008, Lisi was given a grant to continue his studies of E8.

from New Scientist 04 March 2010

cult is back

Karaoke song

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Candy screen wrappers of silkscreen fantastic, requiring memories, both lovely and guiltfree, lurid and lovely with twilight of ages, luscious and lovely and filthy with laghter, laconic giggles, ennui fort the passions, in order to justify most spurious desires, rectify moments, most serious and urgent, to hail upon the face of most odious time, requiring replies most facile and vacuous, with words nearly singed, with the heartbeat of passions, spew forth with the grace of a tart going under, subject of great concern, noble origin

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Denigrate obtuse and active verbs pronouns, skewer the sieve of optical sewer, release the handle that holds all the gates up, puncture the eyeballls, that seep all the muck up, read all the books and he people worth reading and still see the muck on the sky of the ceiling

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Please raise the flag rosy red carpet envy english used here is messenger is nervous it's no fun at all out here in the hall

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Mister moonlight succulent smooth and gorgeous. Isn't it nice? We're number One and so forth. Isn't it sweet being unique?

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

For screeching and yelling and various offenses, lower the queen and bend her over the tub, against the state, the country, the committe, hold her head under the water please for an hour, for groveling and spewing and various offenses, puncture the bloat with the wing of a sparrow, the inverse, the obverse, the converse,the reverse, the sharpening wing of the edge of a sparrow, for suitable reckonings too numerous to mention, as the queen is fat she is devoured by rats there is one way to skin a cat or poison a rat it is hetero four hear to three forthirightly stated.

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

relent and obverse and inverse and perverse and reverse the inverse of perverse and reverse and reverse an reverse and reverse and reverse and chop it and pluck it and cut it and spit it and sew it to joy on the edge of a cyclop and spinet it to rage on the edge of a cylindrical minute.

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Put down that rag simpering, callow and morose who let you in? if I knew, then I could get out the murder you see is a mystery to me

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

dear Mister Muse fellow of wit and gentry medieval ruse filling the shallow and empty, fools that duel duel in pools.

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

To Rembrandt and Oswald, to peanuts and ketchup, sanctimonious sycophants stir in the bushes, up to the stand with your foot on the bible as king I must order and constantly arouse, if you swear to catch up and throw up and up up, a king full of virgin kiss me and spin it, excuse to willow and wander dark wonders divest me of robes-sutures Harry and pig meat, the fate of a nation, rests hard on your bosoms, the king on his throne, puts his hand down his robe, the torture of inverse and silk screen and Harry, and set the tongue squealing the reverse and inverse

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Tantalize poets with visions of grandeur, their faces turn blue with the reek of the compost, as the livig try hard to retain what the dead lost, with double dead sickness from writing at what cost and business and business and reverse and reverse and set the brain reeling the inverse and perverse

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Objections suffice apelike and tactile bassoon oboeing me cordon the virus' section off to the left is what is not right

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

English arcane tantamount here to frenzy passing for me lascivious elder passion corpulent filth disguised as silk

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Contempt, contempt and contempt for the boredom, I shall poison the city and sink it with fire, for Cordless and Harry and Apepig and Scissor, the messenger's wig seems fraught with desire, for blueberry picnics and pince-nez and magpies, the mseenger's skirt, would you plaese hook it higher, for children and adults all thos under ninety, how truly disgusting. Would you please put it down? a stray in this fray is no condom worth saving, as king I'm quite just, but it's just quite impossible, a robe and a robe and a robe and a bat, no double class inverse could make lying worth dying

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

With cheap simian melodies, hillbilly outgush, for illiterate ramblings for cheap understanding the simple the inverse, the compost, the reverse, the obtuse and stupid, and business, and business, and cheap, stupid lyrics, and simple mass reverse while the real thing is dying

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Accept the pig, enter the Owl and Gorgeous, King on the left, it on the right and primping adjusting his nose as he reads from his scroll
folksy knockwurst peel back the skin of French and what do you find? follicles intertwinning, succulent prose wrapped up in robes

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Off with his head, take his head from his neck off, requiring memories both lovely and guiltfree, put out his eyes, then cut his nose off, sanctimonious sycophants stir in the bushes, scoop out his brain, put a string where his ears were, all the king's horses and all the king's men, swing the whole mess at the end of the wire, scratch out his eyes with the tip of a razor, let the wire extend from the tip of a rose, Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, Oh! but retains the remnants of what once was a nose, pass me my robe, fill my bath up with water

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

jumpsuit and pig meat and making his fortune, while making them happy with the inverse and obverse and making them happy and making them happy with the coy and the stupid, just another dumb lackey, who puts out one thing, while singing the other, but the real thing's alone and it is no man's brother

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

No one knows no nose is good news and senseless extend the wine drink here toast to selfless ten year old port is perfect in court

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

safety is nice not an unwise word spoken scary, bad dreams made safe in lovely songs no doom or gloom allowed in this room

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Casbah and Cascade and Rosehip and Feeling, Cascade and Cyanide, Rachaminoff, Beethoven skull silly wagon and justice and perverse and reverse the inverse and inverse and inverse, blueberry catalog, questionable earnings, hustler's lament and the rest will in due cry, to battle and scramble and browbeat and hurt while chewing on minstrels and choking on dirt, disease please seems the order of the day, please the king, please the king, please the king day, Casbah and Cascade and Rosehip and Feeling, point of order return the king here to the ceiling

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

oh, not to be whistled or studied or hummed or remembered at nights, when the I is alone, but to skewer and ravage and savage and split with the grace of a diamond, bellicose wit, to stun and to stagger with words as such stone, that those who do hear cannot again return home

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Razzamatazz, there's nothing on my shoulder, lust is a must, shaving my head's made me bolder, will you kindly read what it was I brought thee

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Hello to Ray, hello to Godiva and Angel, who let you in? isn't it nice the party? aren't the lights pretty at night?

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Sick leaf and sorrow and pincers net-scissors, regard and refrain from the daughters of marriage, regards for the elders and youngest in carriage, regard and regard for the inverse and perverse and obverse, and diverse, of reverse and reverse, regard from the sick, the dumb, and the camel from pump's storing water, like brain is too marrow to x-ray and filthy and cutting and peeling to skin and to skin and to bone and to structure to livid and pallid and turgid and structured and structured and structured and structured and structured and regard and refrain, the sick and the dumb, inverse, reverse and perverse

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Contempt, contempt, and contempt for the seething for writhing and reeling and two-bit reportage, for sick with the body and sinister holy, the drown burst blue babies now dead on the seashore, the valorous horseman, who hang from the ceiling, the pig on the carpet, the dusty pale jissom, that has no effect for the sick with the see-saw, the inverse, obverse converse, reverse of reverse the diverse and converse of reverse and perverse and sweet pyrotechnics, and let's have another of inverse, converse, diverse, perverse and reverse, hell's graveyard is damned as they chew on their brains, the slick and the scum, reverse, inverse and perverse

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Plowing while it's done away dumb and ready pig meat sick upon the carpet climb into the casket safe within the parapet sack is in the parapet pigs are out and growling slaughter by the seashore see the lifeguard drowning sea is full of fishes fish's full of china china plates are falling all fall down sick and shiny carpet lie before my eyes eyes lead me to the ceiling walk upon the wall wall tender as the green grass drink the whisky horror see the young girls dancing flies upon the beaches beaches are for sailors nuns across the sea-wall black hood horseman raging swordsman eating fire

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Sick upon the staircase sick upon the staircase blood upon the pillow climb into the parapet see the church bells gleaming knife that scrapes a sick plates of dentures full of air holes the tailor couldn't mend straight shoot her full of air holes climbing up the casket take me to the casket teeth upon her red throat screw me in the daisies rip apart her holler snip the seas fantastic treat her like a sailor full and free and nervous out to make his fortune either this or that way sickly or in good health piss upon a building like a dog in training teach to heel or holler yodel on a sing song down upon the carpet

Left Voice (Morrison, Tucker)

Fire on the carpet set the house ablazing seize and bring it flaming gently to the ground ground Dizzy Bell Miss Fortune fat and full of love-juice drip it on the carpet down below the fire hose weep and whisky fortune sail me to the moon, dear drunken dungeon sailors headless Roman horsemen the king and queen are empty their heads are in the outhouse fish upon the water bowl upon the saviour tooothless wigged Laureate plain and full of fancy name upon a letterhead impressing all wheatgerm love you for a nickel ball you for a quarter set the casket flaming do not go gentle blazing

Right Voice (Reed, Yule)

Tickle polyester sick within the parapet screwing for a dollar sucking on a fire-hose chewing on a rubber line tied to chairs and rare bits pay another player oh you're such a good lad here's another dollar tie him to the bedpost sick with witches' covens craving for a raw meat bones upon the metal sick upon the circle down upon the carpet down upon the carpet down below the parapet waiting for your bidding pig upon the carpet tumescent railroad neuro-anaesthesia analog ready for a good look drooling at the birches swinging from the birches succulent Nebraska

tobacco

Worries

Physicists’ Dreams and Worries in Era of the Big Collider

By DENNIS OVERBYE

Published: January 25, 2010

A few dozen scientists got together in Los Angeles for the weekend recently to talk about their craziest hopes and dreams for the universe.

At least that was the idea.

“I want to set out the questions for the next nine decades,” Maria Spiropulu said on the eve of the conference, called the Physics of the Universe Summit. She was hoping that the meeting, organized with the help of Joseph D. Lykken of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan, would replicate the success of a speech by the mathematician David Hilbert, who in 1900 laid out an agenda of 23 math questions to be solved in the 20th century.

Dr. Spiropulu is a professor at the California Institute of Technology and a senior scientist at CERN, outside Geneva. Next month, CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, will begin colliding protons and generating sparks of primordial fire in an effort to recreate conditions that ruled the universe in the first trillionth of a second of time.

Physicists have been speculating for 30 years what they will see. Now it is almost Christmas morning.

Organized into “duels” of world views, round tables and “diatribes and polemics,” the conference was billed as a place where the physicists could let down their hair about what might come, avoid “groupthink” and “be daring (even at the expense of being wrong),” according to Dr. Spiropulu’s e-mailed instructions. “Tell us what is bugging you and what is inspiring you,” she added.

Adding to the air of looseness, the participants were housed in a Hollywood hotel known long ago as the “Riot Hyatt,” for the antics of rock stars who stayed there.

The eclectic cast included Larry Page, a co-founder of Google, who was handing out new Google phones to his friends; Elon Musk, the PayPal electric-car entrepreneur, who hosted the first day of the meeting at his SpaceX factory, where he is building rockets to ferry supplies and, perhaps, astronauts to the space station; and the filmmaker Jesse Dylan, who showed a new film about the collider. One afternoon, the magician David Blaine was sitting around the SpaceX cafeteria doing card tricks for the physicists.

This group proved to be at least as good at worrying as dreaming.

“We’re confused,” Dr. Lykken explained, “and we’re probably going to be confused for a long time.”

The first speaker of the day was Lisa Randall, a Harvard theorist who began her talk by quoting Galileo to the effect that physics progressed more by working on small problems than by talking about grand ones — an issue that she is taking on in a new book about science and the collider.

And so Dr. Randall emphasized the challenges ahead. Physicists have high expectations and elegant theories about what they will find, she said, but once they start looking in detail at these theories, “they’re not that pretty.”

For example, a major hope is some explanation for why gravity is so weak compared with the other forces of nature. How is it that a refrigerator magnet can hold itself up against the pull of the entire Earth? One popular solution is a hypothesized feature of nature known as supersymmetry, which would cause certain mathematical discrepancies in the calculations to cancel out, as well as produce a plethora of previously undiscovered particles — known collectively as wimps, for weakly interacting massive particles — and presumably a passel of Nobel prizes.

In what physicists call the “wimp miracle,” supersymmetry could also explain the mysterious dark matter that astronomers say makes up 25 percent of the universe. But no single supersymmetrical particle quite fits the bill all by itself, Dr. Randall reported, without some additional fiddling with its parameters.

Moreover, she added, it is worrying that supersymmetric effects have not already shown up as small deviations from the predictions of present-day physics, known as the Standard Model.

“A lot of stuff doesn’t happen,” Dr. Randall said. “We would have expected to see clues by now, but we haven’t.”

These are exciting times, she concluded, but the answers physicists seek might not come quickly or easily. They should prepare for surprises and trouble.

“I can’t help it,” Dr. Randall said. “I’m a worrier.”

Dr. Randall was followed by Dr. Kane, a self-proclaimed optimist who did try to provoke by claiming that physics was on the verge of seeing “the bottom of the iceberg.” The collider would soon discover supersymmetry, he said, allowing physicists to zero in on an explanation of almost everything about the physical world, or at least particle physics.

But he and other speakers were scolded for not being bold enough in the subsequent round-table discussion.

Where, asked Michael Turner of the University of Chicago, were the big ideas? The passion? Where, for that matter, was the universe? Dr. Kane’s hypothesized breakthrough did not include an explanation for the so-called dark energy that seems to be speeding up the expansion of the universe.

Dr. Kane grumbled that the proposed solutions to dark energy did not affect particle physics.

The worrying continued. Lawrence Krauss, a cosmologist from Arizona State, said that most theories were wrong.

“We get the notions they are right because we keep talking about them,” he said. Not only are most theories wrong, he said, but most data are also wrong — at first — subject to glaring uncertainties. The recent history of physics, he said, is full of promising discoveries that disappeared because they could not be repeated.

And so it went.

Maurizio Pierini, a young CERN physicist, pointed out that the tests for new physics were mostly designed to discover supersymmetry. “What if it’s not supersymmetry?” he asked.

Another assumption physicists have taken for granted — that dark matter is a simple particle rather than an entire spectrum of dark behaviors — might not be true, they were told. “Does nature really love simplicity?” Aaron Pierce of the University of Michigan asked.

Neal Weiner of New York University, who has suggested the existence of forces as well as particles on the dark side, said that until recently ideas about dark matter were driven by ideas about particle theory rather than data.

“Ultimately we learn that perhaps it has very little to do with us at all,” Dr. Weiner said. “Who knows what we will find in the dark sector?”

At one point, Mark Wise, a theoretical physicist at Caltech, felt compelled to remind the audience that this was not a depressing time for physics, listing the collider and other new experiments on heaven and on earth. “You cannot call this a depressing time,” he said.

Dr. Randall immediately chimed in. “I agree it’s a good time,” she said. “We’ll make progress by thinking about these little problems.”

On the second day, the discussion continued in an auditorium at Caltech and concluded with a showing of Mr. Dylan’s film and a history talk by Lyn Evans, the CERN scientist who has supervised the building of the Large Hadron Collider through its ups and downs over 15 years, including a disastrous explosion after it first started up in 2008.

Dr. Evans, looking relaxed, said: “It’s a beautiful machine. Now let the adventure of discovery begin.”

Dr. Spiropulu said it had already begun. Her detector, she said, recorded 50,000 proton collisions during the testing of the collider in December, recapitulating much of 20th-century particle physics.

Now it is the 21st century, Dr. Spiropulu said, and “all that has been discussed these last few days will be needed immediately.”

smoke

alone

From childhood's hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Edgar Allan Poe 1829