the pale blue dot – earth from afar

If you follow the direction of mystics who have been pointing out for thousands of years the folly of mankind striving to shape what turns out to be an illusory world here on Earth then you’ll probably enjoy this clip based around the furtherest photo taken of Earth, where the planet we call home is no more than a single blue dot upon a backdrop of an infinitely expansive sky. Everything that happens on Earth is instantly put into a more realistic proportion ie. insignificant

linkage: the pale blue dot

light graffiti

A colorful collection of light graffiti photos

linkage: light graffiti

flickr flash polaroid viewer

This is a nice way to look at a collection of photos,  like a pile of Polaroids on a desktop.

Go here and get your flickr id

Paste it here and generate your own stream 

magenta. it doesn’t exist

Well it exists, but only in our brain. The same can be said of all the other colours. That they only exist in our head. But all the other colours have a wavelength. Magenta it turns out doesn’t. It just does not have a wave length associated with it. How weird is that? Our brain just makes one up to fill the gap!

Don’t take my word for it

understanding the ten dimensions

C’mon admit it. For the last little while as your consciousness has expanded you have been getting more and more interested in the universe and ultimately your position in it. You have started to look into quantum physics, spirituality, and the energy connections that bind us. You have started reading about eastern philosophy. You even have a few books on meditation and chakras.

Then you come across one of those books by Steven Hawking on how the hell the universe works. All of a sudden it all comes apart as you realise just how much you don’t know. Welcome to the tenth dimension. Come have a look they explain it all with very good animations.

linkage: understanding the ten dimensions

ever wondered how to solve complex problems?

Never fear. The clever data modelers over at ideogram.com have a collection of amazingly beautiful diagrams explaining to solve any problem. Have a look and then see if you and a few friends can’t solve the human need for violence of the body and mind.

linkage: how to solve complex problems

excellent burning man photographs

Stumbled across this nice photo-journalist by the name of Gabe. There is an excellent series from Burning Man 2006. Absolutely amazing deco. I am thinking I may just have to make it there for next years party.

linkage: gabe kirchheimer burning man, main page

one big week

Has it only been a week back? The culture shock was there but wasn’t as bad as I was expecting. I am still shaking my head at the size of things here though. Everything is on such a large scale.

It starts with the sky. We’re in Big Sky Country for sure. The land is flat and the view off the deck is over seeminging endless fields not so much as interrupted by a fence. Prairie land. The Rockies would be visible off to the West if they weren’t shrouded in cloud. The sky is a morass of constantly amazing cloud formations, making for some excellent sunsets that seem impossible to photograph.

Lots of land means houses are big. Huge even. Much like the vehicles which are truly staggering. There are so many ridiculously sized pickups, SUV’s, 5th wheels (Massive Caravan/Trailers that attach to the rear deck of the pickups) and RV’s (mind bogglingly sized motor homes that in any other country would be an oversized bus). No wonder North America needs to secure the worlds oil supplies.

No one seems to bat an eye. I guess it is so common place. To be fair the large pickups and SUV’s must be useful when the land is inundated with a few feet of snow and we are in the heart of farming and oil country, but still…

Supersize me seems to apply to the food packages and the supermarkets list cheap prices for two or more of every item. No wonder obesity and adult onset diabetes are so common. Living off the fat of the land I guess.

In other news I met my first fundamentalist redneck. Nice enough guy and very intelligent, but also a bigot. Narrow minded and full of dislike (if not hate) currently targeted at Muslims. Gee what a surprise. But he isn’t a racist, as he “has Philipinos working for him, and even has some Orientals for friends”. Fundamentalists are the same everywhere. Blinded by their truth – that we are all different.

I don’t know how people are going to wake up to the fact that we are all the same. All these imagined differences are just that, imagined, constructs of the mind, creations of the ego. It begins at such an early age, the building up of an identity. National anthems at schools, sporting events with us against them, the media playing on fears that everyone is out to get us. It should be no surprise to me but it is each and every day. The worlds population is unconscious, delusional and mentally unwell.

What a fucking waste.

little people

It’s a bit strange trying to shake off the effects of jetlag when you are staring out the window at 10pm and it is still light. It’s not like I have to get up and go to work so I quite enjoy the silence and stillness of lying awake in the early hours.

Had the clearest dream I have had in ages the other night. There were tiny Gullivers Travels sized, Far Side ‘esque people using the skirting boards around the house as a pathway for going about their business. I was stunned. This was an amazing scientific discovery. Crouching down for a closer look one of the little fellas stopped and was looking up at me. I realised he was shouting something to me. It was hard to hear so I got right down close to hear what he was saying. Turns out he was screaming “FUCK OFF!”.

Hilarious.

an end, a new beginning

Well that’s it then. Everything is put into boxes to ship to Canada or into backpacks to take with. The place looks so stark. It will be a trying final two days here with only a few knives and forks to keep us company. Losing the PC and ever present net link will be a bit hard to get used to. Ever since I moved the computer into the living room it has become an essential part of many conversations. It has progressed from tool, to knowledge base. So many times we have paused for a few seconds to Google for an answer to a question raised. How did we ever live with out it? How will I live without instant access to the net while on the road? In the Hyperion science fiction series there is a cataclysm and the societies loose their access to the ‘All Thing’, their super advanced equivalent of our world wide web and millions of people are unable to function without it.

I guess we aren’t too far off a truly portable internet system, the veritable ‘comlog’ with instant access to well, anything you can think of. I suppose it will do me good to be technology deprived for an extended period. Break the habit of reliance that I have so taken for granted.

In other news:

Things are going crazy everywhere. Bush even took questions at his latest speech – how strange is that???

Try this: EU investigates CIA prisons or The Real Price of Propoganda

filing cabinet managers

 There is an unofficial ranking scale in offices for managers. You may not have realised it but it is there none the less. The amount of filing cabinets under control of a manager helps determine their pecking order. Have a look next time you swing past the managers office. Those who are clawing their way up the office ladder need to make their mark. One of the ways they do this is to collect, and maintain control over, filing cabinets. The manager who sits next to me is a two filing cabinet manager. He is well on his way to a corner office, I can tell.

shark vs. donkey

In a fight to the death, on a sloping beach, in the shallows, a shark with a laser beam strapped to it’s head tries to shoot a nimble donkey wearing iron shod hooves with a lethal back kick.

The water. How shallow does it need to be before the bookies give even odds to the donkey?

packing your life into boxes

It seems weird to be divesting myself of so much stuff. All these little things that I have accumulated in little more than two years of living back in New Zealand – they all mount up. What to do with these trinkets. The more powerful ones, the ones that are just a little special in some way, they go in the ‘to ship’ boxes, the’re easy. There sure are lots of them though. Still they are all quite small. The most precious seem to be the necklaces and pendants. Something totemic about them all. They trigger very vivid recollections. I think I’ll take them travelling.

Strange to be packing things worthless in any other persons eyes, into boxes to ship half way around the world. You have to do it because you can’t bear to discard them. They will be so nice to have on the other side. I am even now, looking forward to opening them in six months time.

I don’t like leaving things behind. There is already a big box of books that I don’t expect to be shipping over anywhere until I know I am settling there for a while. Seems stupid to ship them all over the place. It’s a bit agonising parting with the knowledge though. I find that my reference library has become invaluable. Not that I use it that much. It’s just nice to know it’s there. I don’t think you can ever have too many books. But they are a pain in the ass to ship about the place. Perhaps they will sit as pockets of knowledge until I return. Out of sight but not forgotten.