The Boat Post

[woodrabbit]

Visiting from being away from computers for most of the summer....

First things first, if indeed CERN becomes the center of a new universe yet to be defined by tomorrow ...I take great comfort in being in good and great company as we all wink(verb) out together into and on to the next thing....again(?).

Now on to BOATS,.... as a kayaker, canoer and fair weather sailor, I have always appreciated John's defense of our preternatural connection to all things floating.

Having spent the last 2 weeks canoeing in northern Maine in a restored mid century "Chestnut" canoe, on huge lakes placid and rough, the elegance of this ancient form slicing efficiently through the landscape is/was truly profound! This was a sweet and efficient boat, 16 ft long, carrying two people and 300lbs of gear and food.

.....John's verse(s) reminded of a time when I had been walking on a beach as a kid, with my siblings, and we decided that it was time to have lunch and retrace our steps, but the thought of walking back over the insufferable stones again was just too much! So we chose (plan B) to go into the water beyond the surf line and happily swim the 45 minutes back to home base.

Imagine my Maine companion and I humping the same above mentioned 300 lbs thru the woods over the same miles that we covered effortlessly and joyously in our antique canoe.

Choosing water as the most efficient way to move thru landscapes large and small, is, I am convinced, is literally in our DNA, and explains a lot of the things we wonder about.

...chasing the woolly mammoth over a land bridge that we couldn't have known existed in advance, and with the news that the woolly mammoths were actually going the other way....hmmm, now that I think about ... if the food source is marching at you, it might make sense to hunt it towards its source....but..uh.. back to BOATS.

Carry ALL your shit overland hunting 4 legged animals adept at running away from you?....or... paddle/sail sweetly on the edge of the landscape feasting on shellfish, seaweed and fish.

What could the CLUB be defending anyway?

[john]

Visiting from being away from computers for most of the summer....

First things first, if indeed CERN becomes the center of a new universe yet to be defined by tomorrow ...I take great comfort in being in good and great company as we all wink(verb) out together into and on to the next thing....again(?).

Now on to BOATS,.... as a kayaker, canoer and fair weather sailor, I have always appreciated John's defense of our preternatural connection to all things floating.

Having spent the last 2 weeks canoeing in northern Maine in a restored mid century "Chestnut" canoe, on huge lakes placid and rough, the elegance of this ancient form slicing efficiently through the landscape is/was truly profound! This was a sweet and efficient boat, 16 ft long, carrying two people and 300lbs of gear and food.

.....John's verse(s) reminded of a time when I had been walking on a beach as a kid, with my siblings, and we decided that it was time to have lunch and retrace our steps, but the thought of walking back over the insufferable stones again was just too much! So we chose (plan B) to go into the water beyond the surf line and happily swim the 45 minutes back to home base.

Imagine my Maine companion and I humping the same above mentioned 300 lbs thru the woods over the same miles that we covered effortlessly and joyously in our antique canoe.

Choosing water as the most efficient way to move thru landscapes large and small, is, I am convinced, is literally in our DNA, and explains a lot of the things we wonder about.

...chasing the woolly mammoth over a land bridge that we couldn't have known existed in advance, and with the news that the woolly mammoths were actually going the other way....hmmm, now that I think about ... if the food source is marching at you, it might make sense to hunt it towards its source....but..uh.. back to BOATS.

Carry ALL your shit overland hunting 4 legged animals adept at running away from you?....or... paddle/sail sweetly on the edge of the landscape feasting on shellfish, seaweed and fish.

What could the CLUB be defending anyway?

Woodrabbit -

Das Klub would be defending deductive reasoning

To the last man.

Walk, don't swim.

(Women tend to inductive reasoning better than men -

But I'll leave that argument for another day.)

So you swam.

The most energy/time efficient solution

To the time/space conundrum.

But you weren't carrying gear.

Boats are an incredible algorithm

In response to this difficulty,

Of swimming, and carrying gear.

So, I say to you

- Rather like Galileo or Einstein -

Who was the unsung genius

Who invented the boat algorithm,

Right on top of the swimming algorithm.

Inductive reasoning strikes again.......

No need to apply to God for a permit,

"tis intuitively obvious".


hoka hey

john

[woodrabbit]

John

....I left out the swim with an arm over a log with a bag tied to it, wondering if there is a better way.

The mind is a wonderful thing.

[Ishtar]

Still with us Ish?

I keeled over shortly after posting that.

Anyway, have been reading up on CERN and the God Particle (also called Higgs Boson, in keeping with our nautical theme), and have come across an article about all the things the particle collider will do. Turns out, it's also going to be looking for other dimensions! This is our equivalent exploration to ancient nautical ones to new worlds.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7604293.stm

ATLAS - one of two so-called general purpose detectors. Atlas will be used to look for signs of new physics, including the origins of mass and extra dimensions

CMS - the second general purpose detector will, like ATLAS, hunt for the Higgs boson and look for clues to the nature of dark matter

ALICE - will study a "liquid" form of matter called quark-gluon plasma that existed shortly after the Big Bang

LHCb - Equal amounts of matter and anti-matter were created in the Big Bang. LHCb will try to investigate what happened to the "missing" anti-matter.

So maybe it will also find the thousand times brighter sun and the sunless sea?

But this is our boat isn't it ...? This is our voyage over an unknown horizon where we may all drop off the end ... or meet strange sea monsters or mermaids that lure us to our watery graves ...

Anyway, we'll have to see. They haven't switched it on yet ...



.

[Ishtar]

and further .... Higgs Boson and whether there is a God/gods.

...And very soon scientists here will embark on their biggest experiment ever, the hunt for a particle which gave the universe its form.

Its scientific name is the Higgs Boson, but because it is so fundamental in shaping the universe, others have called it the God particle.

It is a particle that is supposed to endow other fundamental particles with mass. Without it there would be no gravity, no universe as we know it - no "let there be light" moment.

No-one has seen it, but physicists have invoked it because it is the simplest explanation for how the universe evolved.

Most physicists are instinctively drawn towards theories with a simple elegance.

Reverend Sir John Polkinghorne used to be a theoretical physicist and worked with Professor Peter Higgs, after whom the God particle was named.

Professor Polkinghorne went on to become an Anglican priest. He believes the equations which describe the way sub-atomic particles interact contain a natural beauty in which some find a spark of divinity.

He said: "Physicists are deeply impressed with the order of the world. It is rationally beautiful and structured, and the feeling that there is a mind behind it is a very natural feeling to have."

It is not the first time that a scientific study of the universe has inspired awe and wonder....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7607531.stm

I share this only because we've been having discussions lately about God and science. Some believe that the way life on earth is ordered, e.g. the process of evolution, discounts a God. Others perceive in that very same elegant order and symmetry evidence of a divine intelligence at work.

It's in the eye of the beholder ....

I'm sailing with Higgs Boson!


.

[woodrabbit]

Before we take any sighs of relief and/or come to any cosmic conclusions " as in "OH, My!!, REALLY!?! NO Way?... Yes, Way!!"

Here is a quote from the NY Times this morning.

If the new collider is a car, then what physicists did today was turn on an engine, that will now sit and warm up for a couple of months before anybody drives it anywhere. The first meaningful collisions, at an energy of 5 trillion electron volts, will not happen until late fall.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/11/scien ... er.html?hp

[Ishtar]

Before we take any sighs of relief and/or come to any cosmic conclusions " as in "OH, My!!, REALLY!?! NO Way?... Yes, Way!!"

We're all still here
no one has gone away
Waiting, acting much too
well and procrastinating

The cross of the earth
(let me go through)
The four winds point them
Body to body
Seas to anoint them ...

Incredible String Band
Job's Tears


AND

"It is advisable to look from the tide pool to the stars and then back to the tide pool again."

John Steinbeck
The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)

[Minimalist]

Wheeeeee! We're still alive!

[Minimalist]

What could the CLUB be defending anyway?

Their doctoral dissertations?

[kbs2244]

Ish:

The question we are trying to answer about your two shaman’s visiting each other telepathically is how did they get to where they were physically?

[Ishtar]

Ish:

The question we are trying to answer about your two shaman’s visiting each other telepathically is how did they get to where they were physically?

In my experience, KB, fwiw, I think the fact that we get similar reports and descriptions of other-dimensional places from shamans from different parts of the world is probably because they visited that place at the same time, or at different times.

I think that is a much more likely scenario, although there are many, many reports of shamans teleporting themselves.

So it would be like if I went to New York tomorrow, and you went on Saturday. We would both go back and describe the same Empire State Building, even though we didn't actually meet.


.

[Cognito]

So it would be like if I went to New York tomorrow, and you went on Saturday. We would both go back and describe the same Empire State Building, even though we didn't actually meet.

I apologize for getting into Quantum Theory here, but time appears to be a human
construct agreed upon. In other words, yesterday and tomorrow never cease to exist.

That certainly makes visiting much easier.

[kbs2244]

What I meant to say is how did the one guy get to SA and the other to Alaska in the first place?
Feet, boats, camels, etc are means of physical transportation.
And we are talking about the numbers of people to establish a settlement at the far end.
Not a single guy with special powers.

[Ishtar]

So it would be like if I went to New York tomorrow, and you went on Saturday. We would both go back and describe the same Empire State Building, even though we didn't actually meet.

I apologize for getting into Quantum Theory here, but time appears to be a human construct agreed upon. In other words, yesterday and tomorrow never cease to exist.

That certainly makes visiting much easier.

Yes, I think that's true. Time is one of our inventions. It wasn't a good analogy. I think I was trying to describe a situation in which two shamans could describe the same thing without having to actually meet.

This is a very difficult concept to understand, because the logical mind will ask:

"Yes but if two shamans went to the same timeless place but at different times (in this dimension), as there was no time in the timeless place, how come they didn't meet there because every moment there should be now."

And I wouldn't know how to answer that.


.

[john]

All -

In my opine,

Shamanism and Quantum Theory have a hell of a lot in common.

To wit,

The more that our understanding

Of Quantum Theory advances,

The more it resembles the Shamanic.


hoka hey


john