Air Conditioning: aka: the Great Grid Fear.

(film: Makropoulos' Air Conditoner)

Well,

the heat in my part of the world today was so intense

that it was unbearable.

However, it was not actually all that unbearable to me

because

for the first time in my multi-centennial existence,

I live in a place with central air.

So I sat here, in my cool cool house --

I and all those other select few --

I sat here in my air conditioning

while the rest of the world

smoldered.

I sat here soooo long, 

my guilt became unbearable ---

For so many years, for centuries in fact,

I have sweat it out with the best of you,

and during that time,  I felt like I was participating somehow

in the agony of the planet,

And I felt ethical, and compassionate, and good.

But this time,

I sipped ice tea 

in the a.c.

And it made me feel so two-faced -- I, who advocate love

and peace and togetherness,

sat excluded and comfortable.

So I decided that,

if nothing else,

I should take a walk and participate

in the pain,

and what you see above is the sun

as it shined

somewhere in America

where I happen to live

at around 7:45 p.m.

That's one hot sun.

~ ~ ~

As I walked, the source

of my guilt and self-loathing solidified:

me, and a couple cats, and a friend or two,

sat in my apartment

all of this smoggy, miserable hot afternoon

and zapped that overtaxed power grid

of however many kilowats of energy

that I devoured today.

And in the meantime,

people are hot and starving

in Somalia.

Heck,

they're hot and starving somewhere

in America, too,

I'm sure,

even as I type.

(sprinkling the sidewalk)

You see, I have an intense concern for the Health of the Grid.

The Grid,

by its very design,

could go on infinitely,

or at least it could embrace the entire planet,

if we were disposed to let it do so.

( infinite grid of resistors )

Instead,

largely because of commercial interests,

it's localized;

my Grid, probably

isn't your Grid,

if you don't live

in America,

and even if you live in another part of America

my Grid may not be your Grid.

 ( celsias )

One outcome of 

this Localization of Gridded service is

The Great Grid Fear.

The Great Grid Fear, of course,

is that if we load too much energy on our regional power grid,

we'll blow the fuse,

so to speak,

which is why I was so darned upset

about my airconditioner.

I was so upset that when I came home from my walk, I turned it off.

Now part of the 

Great Grid Fear is that

one too many airconditioners

could "blow the fuse"

so to speak,

and thereby,

destroy the power source

in a large sector of the civilized world,

and if that happens,

well, hell,

we'd have to live like the people of Somalia.

And if we had to live like the people of Somalia,

well,

hot damn,

we'd probably all start dying,

in very large numbers.

And that wouldn't be good,

would it?

( cbsnews )

So we preserve the health of our

individual Grids

by keeping them local

and somewhat flawed.

In fact,

right now,

I'm quite concerned that if I turn my a.c. back on

tomorrow,

when it's predicted to be even hotter,

I may be that unlucky one

to pop the circuit on my Grid,

and if I am,

well,

I just hope no one can track it

and find out.

(But they probably can,

whoever THEY are.)

~ ~ ~

Anyway,

so after feeling Great Guilt

for the Grid,

not to mention for the emotional and physical health

of all the people in my general part of the planet, I began to think,

as I am prone to do,

that perhaps the Electrical Grid could be made more coherent

and therefore stronger

if we just found the technology to extend it 

so it embraces the entire planet --

same, too, 

with all the other grids.

After all,

that is how we perceive of our planet isn't it?

In terms of a Grid?  So why can't we use the basic model,

and extend our Power Grid

infinitely?

( crystallinks )

And if that were the case,

perhaps

we could supply electricity,

and ultimately air conditioning

to the Samalis,

not to mention the homeless under a bridge in Manhattan,

or in Mississippi,

or Honduras,

or Ipswich

or Delhi

or Rotterdam,

or San Francisco,

or where ever.

And then I wouldn't have to participate

in the Great Grid Fear,

and neither would you --

(though on some level,

we'd all participate in it equally).

Now, I'm certain

that someone with more knowledge than I

in these areas could and would

tell me why my idea is absolutely

unfeasible,

and I welcome them to do so.

But anyone who reads this blog should know

that I'm not prone to go by what is scientifically viable.

So let's just entertain the notion for a moment:

what if it were indeed possible to build a Global Power Grid?

What if we took all the money,

from all the wars

and the crime

and the useless laws

and the committees produced to perpetuate Fear,

and what if we put it towards

building global resource grids.

And what if those global grids

would make it possible to provide

food and water to all people equally?

So when the planet enters weather patterns

like we're in right now,

everyone would have equal access

to airconditioning,

and water.

And let's add food.

~ ~

Yes, I'll agree to one argument against this:

it's true that if we get hit by a meteorite,

or a massive sun flare,

it would take out the whole planet,

grid wise,

but it would probably

take out the entire planet,

too, 

so what the heck:

why not spread the wealth?

Well, perhaps,

if you've gotten this far in this goofy entry,

you're thinking: this chick is nuts,

and I'm going to unsubscribe from this blog,

or just not read it again,

ever,

or at least for a long time.

Well,

let me submit this as a final contemplation:

last night, I saw a story on the BBC

that informed me that Somalia

is officially suffering a famine.

Today, I heard that the militant, rebel Al Shahab in Somalia

who are making it impossible for foreign aid to reach some areas,

have claimed that the international declaration of "famine"

in their nation is nothing but a political move.

( Voice of America ),

and I thought:

how many Americans really know about this?

I mean, seriously folks:

we're all sitting around in our air-conditioned homes

watching the news where the headline story is

how hot we are --

and people are dying 

in large large numbers

on the other side of the globe,

and the terrorist system has become so sophisticated

that it calls International Declarations of Disastor

"political propaganda."

They sound like American politicians.

So,

a.) turn off your a.c. for a little while, and send the money you save to Somalia,

or

b.) let's build a Global Grid.

Those are my best ideas --

they're probably both pretty far-fetched,

but at least now I feel like I've contributed positively to the world,

as I sit here

sweating.

UNICEFUsa.org

Kutiman

If you haven't figured it out by now,

I am deeply inspired

by the internet's ability

to bridge differences,

and to facilitate collective artwork

that allows each individual to maintain

a shred of uniqueness.

It's most intriguing on the impact of this on music.

Here is my latest find in that regard --

Kutiman --

check it out; haven't much else to say about it.

(with gratitude to Dangerous Minds

for turning me on to this.)

2/11/11: Oh, Egypt (a channel ing)

( allin1one )

Well,

the world is full 

of patterns,

                             and today

is a most amazing pattern:

2 - 11 - 11

                               or, if you're

in Europe

11 - 2 - 11

which is prettier.

Either way,

it's magical:

and look what happened:

Egypt.

One of the world's very

oldest of civizations

made a peaceful decision

civilly.

May the peace they found

today

stay with them,

civilly,

in the spirit of 

11 - 2 - 11

                                 Who will the next nation

                                               be to find a civil

                                                  solution to an old

                                            problem

on a harmonious

                                         day?

God bless you,

Egypt.

Some Current News That Coincides With My Recent Channelings and Articles

( hoaxslayer )

I really want to thank

anyone 

who follows this blog

with any 

regularity.

I know it's damned hard work.

What's even harder,

is this:

Working a regular job

while this stuff

keeps pouring through.

Some of my entries are pure channelling,

some is pure

intellectual work

done by my poor

feeble mind

as it puts together the pieces

I've been studying 

for a very, very long time.

If you follow the logic that I am channeling,

I mean:

seriously channeling,

then I'm also recognizing texts

done by previous channelers.

I'm putting together

a huge 

puzzle.

You must be patient.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

In the meantime,

check out these recent newstories

that bring some 

interresting correlations

when read along side my recent

more intellectual

entries

E. O Wilson Provides A Theory Of Social Evolution

(wired.com)

Space Squid Takes Sci-Fi Back to Clay-Tablet Age

Read More http://www.wired.com/underwire/2010/08/space-squid-clay-tablets/#ixzz0xwqqcUde

And two that are not directly related,

but

I just like it because I see

an indirect relation

to other stuff I wrote in the last six months:

Maps: How Mankind Remade Nature

Wired Science

Weird Oblong Crater Deepens Mars Mystery

Wired Science

(I'll probably have more to say about that last one.  looks a bit like a skin disorder,

doesn't it?)

read the letter

* 

I'm an absolutely miserable blogger.

When I write,

I write in abundance.

When I don't write it's because my mind is

a blank,

an empty page waiting for the words to form.

Blankness is frustrating.

Sometimes it's far more useful

when a creator at least has

a mold,

a model

of some kind
in which to shape
the message.

* * 

( firstschool )

Remember when paper looked

like that?

When the challenge of writing was not

to produce meaning,

but rather,

to produce shapes within a prescribed space?

I really loved learning to print because

it was like artwork;

it was also a little like

playing bumper cars,

or something like that.

My pen was the car,

bumping from hard line to hard line

passing through the dashed line,

grateful that it was there to guide me on my course.

There were certain letters I loved 

to produce:

SSSSSSSSssssssss

GGGGGGggggggg

AAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaa

RPRPRPRPRPrrrrpppp

fabulous shapes that arched through those lines

in such interesting ways.

I loved looking for the points of balance:
the two corresponding curves in the
S,
the slopes of the
V

There was something else about those letters

that I love the most: 

I really felt they were shaped

like the sound they made.

I felt that writing them was the act

of finding an exact graphic representation

on the sounds I made in my mouth.

So too was the case with

XXXXXXXX

KKKKKKK

TTTTTTTT

UUUUUUU
VVVVVVVVVVV

and of course

OOOOOOOOOO

***

While I was in Greece

recently,

I had the pleasure of being with Greek people

who had some knowledge not only of how to read 

Modern Greek

but also

Ancient Greek.

It is interesting to stand at an ancient site

and hear people sounding out the letters there.

When the sounds and the shapes were put together, they even made sense to me.

And I had a little revelation.

Well, it was and is one of my funky little theories,
one of those things
that happens in my mind
when everyone else thinks
I'm zoning out.

It went like this:

***

( omniglot )


I recently met a Chinese woman who explained to me
the evolution of written Chinese.

Fundamentally, written Chinese is a series of pictographs --
each sign contains
a series of strokes
the work together to produce
an impression of a complete idea.

Originally,
the script was more recognizably pictoral,
but over time it became more abstract:

( commons.wikimedia )

This type of writing is called hànzi and I'm a little afraid
to try to explain much else about it,
because it's such a different
system for me.  I'm just beginning
to understand it.
Follow the link on the word hànzi and it
will bring you to yet another site
that explains the strokes
and the writing a little more.

Keep in mind that within this system,
one block of strokes
represents an entire concept,
and as new concepts have emerged,
different combinations of existing signs
have been used to signify those new concepts,
as you can see below,
and the translations are
amusing:

(the wikipedia article on this system
also appears to be
pretty helpful)


Notably,
when a young Chinese student is learning to write,
she doesn't use that three-lined paper
that we in the West use.

She does have paper to help her,
but notice how it emphasizes isolated squares;
it's really much more like
a grid

( cantonese )

For anyone who
has dared to read other entries
in this blog,
especially those
where the keyword is
"grid"
you can imagine I might
go a little crazy right now with the implications of this.
But I won't because that's not the purpose
of this entry.

Rather my purpose here
is to think about
the writing system itself,
how it is produced,
and the fact that it is,
at its very root,
historically,
representational.

Chinese writing began as an attempt to represent,
as an artist would,
the world that the writer viewed.
Its basis is concrete
and grounded in
observable outside phenomenon.
Unlike Western script.



or so we have thought, for a very very long time.


****

( ancientscripts )

I had had this rather fascinating introduction
to written Chinese
right before I left
on my trip to my own
ancient homeland.

And then I found myself wandering through ruins,
looking at an ancient script
that my guide claimed
any Modern Greek
could read today.

My own Greek
is long gone,
forgotten on the waves or torments
of time and history,
but I read along with my companions
as we looked at the worn inscriptions,
and I was amazed at how much
I could actually hear in my head.
My amazement continued
when I began to feel I knew why:
it was fairly easy.

Because of the way they were presented for me,
with each letter framed by a box,
I imagined that the box itself
was the frame for creating the form of the letter, and
I decided that those ancient letters were
representational.
But they did not represent
a cow, or a mountain, or a mother,
no
I decided that the boxy frame
defined the space of the mouth,
and the drawings within that box
represented where I was supposed to put
my tongue inside my mouth,
and how to hold my lips,
as I produced sound:

Θ, for instance,
told me to put my tongue
between my teeth
with my lips slightly open --
th is the sound it makes.

Γ told me to hold my tongue
pressed against
the top of my mouth,
and curve the tip of it
down to the bottom of my mouth
and press it there.

Do it, the sound you produce will be "g"
which is what that represents.

Δ is the tip of the tongue
against the front of the mouth,
a harder obstruction to that frontal space
than Λ,

Δ, by the way, is "D"
Λ is "L".

Now if you look at the chart above,
you can see the letters
changed from place to place,
but in general
my funny little rule applies,

and I began to think that writing,
as we know it in the Western World,
may actually be more representational
than we give it credit it for.

In fact, here is an alphabet
that precedes the Greek
that even more fully exemplifies
my thoughts:

( historian )


Many today may argue
(like Saussure)
that Western words and letters are
arbitrarily chosen,
and demand a high level of
abstract thinking.
I'd agree with the latter part of that
equation,
because clearly,
the Western alphabet,
just like written Chinese
has evolved over time
and moved so far away
from its original source
that  it is all abstraction and
seemingly random.
We don't so clearly
see the original pictures;

If you agree they are pictures.

And what I'm thinking is they are pictures
of the inside of the mouth:

( soundsofenglish )


graphically representing the face
and the contortions it must make
to produce the sounds
that make up words.

In a sense, reading languages that use this type of alphabet
is much more
laborious
than Chinese,
because you must be
much more patient
to read Western languages,
putting one sound after another
in a line, until words, then sentences,
then paragraphs
are decoded.

This type of writing dooms us to
linear thought.
(Linear writing and thinking
are two parts of a trinity,
and the third is
time.)

Yet, it also allows for more flexibility,
more words, and perhaps
more subtlety of meaning.

*/*

The other point my mind went to,
as I contemplated this theory
was the relationship between the scribe and the exterior world
suggested in both types of writing systems:

As I say above,
the Chinese system represents
concrete, identifiable
objects that exist
outside of the writer/scribe/viewer.
It is a system
where the writer
represents his ideas by showing the world
he observes.
There is little sense of the person doing
the actual writing.

 (Metropolitan Museum postcard)
( brooklyn.cuny )


Whereas in the Western system,
it's all about representing something
that is happening in the writer's body--
it's a very somatic and physical form of representation
located solely in the body
of the writer.
It has everything to do with the changes
that the outside world
does to the body of the speaker,
and has little to do
with representing the outside world itself.

If you get what I mean.

Historically, Chinese script is more about external objects,
representing them,
knowing about them;
while
Western script claims a subject,
and the subject is
the writer himself.

Notably,
the first-person pronoun
in Greek
is

"ego"

Grids, Maps & Second Life

The idea of 

The Grid

is a recurrent theme in this blog,

and this is because of a message

that I received about six years ago,

while I was sleeping. 

I've had trouble 

ignoring that message ever since.
It went like this:

"Jesus will come as the Scholar in the Four Days of the Grid"

Yeah, that was the message.  

I detail the circumstances 

of its delivery

in earlier entries (especially here), so I'm not going to do that here.

At this point,

you can either decide

that this Makropoulos chick is just a little too nuts for you,

and move on to the next blog.

If you do, thanks for stopping by!

But the message may linger in your mind,

as it has in mine.

In fact, many of my entries here

fixate, either directly or remotely

on the challenge of untangling that message,

word for word,

and that's what this entry will do again,

with special attention

to the idea of The Grid

1.

The reason I'm thinking about Grids is because, last week, 

I dared to take a stroll in the world of Second Life.

As aggravating as I found Second Life to be, I also think 

its theory and potential are fascinating, and this

allure has been enhanced as I've come to understand,

this week, that the basis of all creation in Second Life

is the Second Life Grid:

~~

Now,

grids are the scaffolding upon which 

almost all acts of artistic representation and creation

are built.  How many of you learned to draw a person 

like this:

( drawsketchabout )

~~~

The other day, I was looking at some pictures of very early maps,

and I thought to myself: well look at that, we've been using 

grids for a heck of a long time to draw maps, as well:

(Yu Ji Tu Map of the tracks of Yu Gong, 1137 -

wikipedia on cartography )

( Tabula Rogeriana  by Muhammed al-Idrisi (1154) )

( 15th Century depiction of

Ptolemy's Geographia - 2 A.D. )

In fact, it was Ptolemy who, back in 2 A.D., came up with this

still very useful notion of latitude and longitude, and what is that but an

acknowledgement that we can perceive of the world by imagining it

as being embraced by a giant grid.  Ptolemy, by the way, knew that

the world was round (and still is).

It was actually some of the navel-gazing generations that followed him

that sort of lost sight of that fact.

So essentially, Ptolemy, in developing 

those elegant "l"s (latitude & longitude), developed an 

intellectual technology

to help in both perceiving and reproducing

an entity.

That intellectual technology works in conjunction

with the imagination to help us extend

the limited scope of our eyes.

2.

Forty years ago,  the city I was living in

was available,

in book form,

and each page of that book

focused on one section

of a grid in the map of my city.

I loved that book;

I would look at those different pages

for hours on end,

memorizing the streets 

in my neighborhood,

then turning the page to see

how they changed in the next neighborhood.

I learned my city that way.

( greatfallsmt )

In our lives, we can live in

one square of a grid

and get to know it very well

or we can get to know it

well enough,

and move to another square,

and ultimately

(and ideally)

look for the points of

connection

between the squares.

This is how we get the bigger picture.

Maps

rely on grids to help represent 

physically

the experience of hovering 

over and seeing

those interconnections:

( commondale )

The problem with maps like these is that
they exist on one dimension.
Map makers over time
have attempted to add
a second dimension
with drawings that indicated
either elevations in the land
or human monuments:

( pictoralmaps )

They still relied on grids!


3.
Perhaps the most
significant artistic development
in extending our perception of grids
while also refining our ability
to reproduce reality accurately
was the development of
perspective drawing, and the concept of the
vanishing point

( mathforum )

Fundamentally, the vanishing point
is the artistic expression
of the limitations of
a single glance.
 

Think about it this way:
it's as if the bird hovering over the one dimensional map
landed on one of those roads, and looked
down its length;
the vanishing point is the place where
the road disappears
on the horizon.

As the Wikipedia article I link to above explains,
you can suggest  a bit more complexity with
two-point perspective
(ie: with imagining there are two points
on the horizon, in two different places
where the line disappears.)

and produce depth with
three-point perspective:

(I must credit Wikipedia for these drawings;
please follow the link above for more details.)


~ ~ ~

Notably, when we get into the realm
of the three dimensions,
it's as if we're taking that flat,
one dimensional
map impression
and lifting it up,
adding grid upon grid above it
and acknowledging that those grids
extend in a limitless fashion
beyond the range of our vision;

we're using the
multiple grid layers
to provide
a scaffolding
for creating
a multi-dimensioned
representation:

This is ultimately
the logic
of the Second Life Grid.




4.
Now what on God's earth,
I suspect you're wondering,
is she going to do with this?

Why has she gone through
this rather elaborate contemplation
on grids, representation and maps?

Well, I'll tell ya' -
I do this partly because it kind of
amuses me.
I love to take an idea and tease it out
and see where it might take me.

But also,
there is this matter of the
Grid
and the Four Days of the Grid

The only part of this message that I'm a little blurry on
is the word "days."  I am certain the voice said
"days," but I interpreted it as "age"
because "days" didn't make sense to me.
At that time.
More on that later.

But in any event, there is the number 4,
and the idea of the Grid,
and to me this suggests
stages of development
in the Grid
and in the technology
it has produced.

Whether we like it or not,
we live in
The Age of The Grid
right now.

I have contemplated elsewhere
how the Grid Ages
could very well have to do with
the various Ages of Artistic representation;

Second Life ups the ante on that idea.
Because Second Life
is a domain where humans have used the technology of the grid
to produce another living space,
a virtual living space
that we can traverse,
and actually, if we so desire,
create a better life than the one we have.


We could perhaps
correct the mistakes that we made on this domain
or fight the wars that would be better if fought
in a virtual domain.


Could Jesus come
in Second Life?
Or perhaps
via
Second Life?
Hmmmm
now that would be unexpected,
wouldn't it?

I guess it all comes down
to how you define
Jesus.