Tuesday 26th of November 2024
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chaos and fame...

fame

Chaos. The “chaos theory” started in Antiquity. It’s a neat concept that defines the unknown and the unpredictable, as well as the “before”. Our human imagination was running erroneously wild, and was subsequently restricted by the unnecessary need to invent the concept of sin, in order to make people “obey” and “behave” with “good and evil” battling it out in their consciousness. In most eastern religious beliefs such as Buddhism, “good and evil” do not exist. The invention of sin and its use as a motivator of behaviour has lasted beyond its usefulness. These days, sciences have tried to recover the proper sense of evolved animality in human life and eliminate the unhealthy idea of godly creation. Because of lack of real knowledge, our imagination had run so wild, that priests of kingdoms needed the populace to be docile and fight the only authorised wars of the empire. This was a way to avoid anarchy. That was the defined influential realm of sin, whether it worked as such or not. 

Comes Augustus, the first Roman emperor, the one who dispatched the other two of the governing Triumvirate, defeating Marcus Lepidus, while Anthony committed suicide. Napoleon did the same trick with “his” other two consuls, in a government-style based on Augustus. People should have seen the Emperor coming. And in this set up, god became the enthroning authority, despite god being only an imaginary bloke (God is a male). God is a good illusion of fear to fool the simpletons and the uneducated, until we were bamboozled by the unconditional “love of god” as the furnace of hell started to loose traction. Please, understand that “education” in religious beliefs is not education but a restriction of curiosity through powerful brainwashing, into submission.

Chaos was a lazy careless god. His good wife with whom he shared the throne was Nyx, the goddess of night. Their son, Erebus (darkness), dethroned Chaos because he thought his dad was a lazy bastard and fucked his own mother. They had two “beautiful” children. Aether (light) and Hemera (day). Of course, the kids as kids do, allied and dethroned Erebus and Nyx. Aether and Hemera had a child together they called Eros (love). Aether, Hemera and Eros worked together for whatever reason to create Pontus (the sea) and Tellus (the earth). Eros pierced the cold earth with his arrows to create all living thingies (Gaea). Gaea (life on earth) so awaken by Eros, crowned his work by inventing Uranus (heaven). The earth was a disk at the centre of which Greece stood. To the north, a land was inhabited by fortunate peaceful humans, who never felt pain nor death — the Hyperboreans. On the south, on the other shore of the river Oceanus (the Mediterranean), laid another painless place for peaceful and virtuous people called the Ethiopians.

There were also some lovely islands, to which people were transported by the gods for eternity, without “tasting” death — the Isles of the Blest. 

Uranus and Gaea soon took over the throne and had six sons (the Titans —Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus and Cronus), and six daughters (the Titanides — Ilia, Rhea, Themis, Thetis, Mnemosyn and Phoebe).

All these and the next characters were cleverly and wrongly invented to explain natural phenomena. The Titans were imprisoned by their dad (Uranus) in a dark abyss called Tartarus which soon admitted the next progeny of Uranus and Gaea, the Cyclopes. The Cyclopes — Brontes (thunder), Steropes (lightning) and Arges (sheet-lighting) — helped the Titans to make incessant clamour for freedom. Uranus opposed freedom for the kids, as he feared their power. Gaea plotted against Uranus, with the Titans and the Cyclopes, to revolt but only one kid decided to rebel — Cronus. Cronus hated his dad for being so mean and so cruel. Eventually, Cronus won the throne but in defeat, Uranus cursed his son that he too, Cronus, would be supplanted by his own children. Cronus released the Titans and the Titanides from the abyss and married his own sister Rhea (Cybele) and gave his brothers and other sisters portions of the world to rule upon. 

In order to avert his father’s prediction, Cronus ate his own sons… Cronus was the impersonation of Time. Time kills us all. Eventually, Rhea, horrified by the carnage, concealed her youngest latest son, Jupiter (Jove, Zeus). As Cronus wanted to devour this new son, Rhea wrapped a stone in a towel instead and Cronus swallowed it without discovering the subterfuge. Jupiter was thus secretly taken away by the Melian Nymphs and raised by a goat, in a cave on Mount Ida. The goat did so well, it was recompensed with a constellation in the sky…

 

And Chaos never lived ever after... Well not really. The stories of these mad gods and the mad humans fighting each other for nothing only gained crescendo from this point onwards. Imagination had to go on hyperdrive to fill this unbelievable story with more unbelievable chapters. It was fun.

 

The Abrahamic belief system was imbued with its own myths, including creation, all full of brimstones and perpetual repentance for an “original sin” that makes far less sense than the story of the gods of chaos. Salvation was at hand though, when some dudes nailed a man to a couple of bits of wood. In this stupid adventure, we we’re doomed, unless we believed the magic that the man who died was only dead for three days, but being himself the son of a god, the only one at this stage, he could have made it five days or more — say a week or a month, same difference. This unbelievable story makes less sense than Cronus eating his babies to protect himself from a fatherly curse... No wonder our nightmares and entertaining movies are filled with zombies coming out of tombstones... The amazing thing is that Christianity and its sister faiths of Islam and Jewish belief, lasted to this day in the mind of so many deluded people, reinforced by traditions. This long lasting influence has been mostly due to the powerful alliance of kings, emperors and popes, all designed to keep the populace underfoot. 

Not even reality can make a dint into this unholy union. Though there has been skirmishes of various kinds within, this alliance has continued in the mind of loonies, anti-science artful dodgers and creationists — and to this day, say in the mind of Presidents like Trump, who in relation to beliefs, is a bullshit artist. The rejection of sciences by the powerful is painful to watch. Powerful people resent sciences because sciences remove their godly right to rule, and give them the minds of monkeys. Genesis at least allows us to wrongfully dream that we once were angels. 

Meanwhile, the hundred-tongued goddess of fame (Fama) trumpet in hand proclaims the exploits of Jupiter (Jove, Zeus), or anything her master wished, whether these were true or false. 

 

“Fame than who never plague that runs

Its way more swiftly wins :

Her very motion lends her power :

She flies and waxes every hour.

At first she shrinks, and cowers for dread :

Ere long she soars on high :

Upon the ground she plants her tread,

Her forehead in the sky.”

Virgil (translation by Conington)

 

Sciences have developed better and more accurate models of where we’re at, all based on observations and imagination that strictly fits the observations. Mathematics, physics, chemistry gives us very precise ideas of the world we live in. Possibly too real for some who prefer the iffy worlds of Zeuskin. But do we know what electricity is? Well the answer might shock us, especially when we look at our power bill. We don’t really know the intricacies of the force that gives us light and power. The closest explanation we can come with is the precise difference of potential (in the number of “free” electrons). Between A and B there is a space. A and B are at a different level of “electron” status. Connect A and B and there will be a flow towards an AB energy equalisation. This is why that in order to maintain the flow, “we need to top it up” by whatever means. Wind turbines, solar panels, water-mills.

 

The principle of minimum (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_minimum_energy) energy is essentially a restatement of the second law of thermodynamics. It states that for a closed system, with constant external parameters and entropy, the internal energy will decrease and approach a minimum value at equilibrium.

 

So what is an “electron”?...  Go on and do your own research... 

 

The idea that natural disasters are punishments from god is as idiotic as a god sitting on a loo. Unfortunately, the bible and the other holy books are full of this crap, full of wars on behalf of god and punishment for failure, of concubines and multiwived kings and full of vengeance from the bearded loony in the Uranus. Makes no sense at all.

 

cosmic rays...

Cosmic rays are atom fragments that rain down on the Earth from outside of the solar system. They blaze at the speed of light and have been blamed for electronics problems in satellites and other machinery.

First discovered in 1912, many things about cosmic rays remain a mystery more than a century later. One prime example is exactly where they are coming from. Most scientists suspect their origins are related to supernovas (star explosions), but the challenge is that cosmic ray origins appear uniform when you look across the entire sky.

History

While cosmic rays were only discovered in the 1900s, scientists knew something mysterious was going on as early as the 1780s. That's when French physicist Charles-Augustin de Coulomb — best known for having a unit of electrical charge named after him — observed an electrically charged sphere suddenly and mysteriously not being charged any more.

At the time, air was thought to be an insulator and not an electric conductor. With more work, however, scientists discovered that air can conduct electricity if its molecules are charged or ionized. This would most commonly happen when the molecules interact with charged particles or X-rays.

But where these charged particles came from was a mystery; even attempts to block the charge with large amounts of lead were coming up empty. On Aug. 7, 1912, physicist Victor Hess flew a high-altitude balloon to 17,400 feet (5,300 meters). He discovered three times more ionizing radiation there than on the ground, which meant the radiation had to be coming from outer space.

read more:

https://www.space.com/32644-cosmic-rays.html

smelling the flowers...

 

Ceres, daughter of Cronus and Rhea, one of Jupiter’s consorts, was goddess of civilisation and agriculture. Ceres’ Daughter from her own brother Jupiter was Proserpina, the goddess of vegetation. 

 

“Sacred goddess, Mother Earth,

Thou from whose immortal bosom,

Gods, and men, and beasts have birth,

Leaf and blade, and bud and blossom,

Breathe thine influence most divine

On thine own child, Proserpine.


“If with mists of evening dew

Though dost nourish these your flowers

Till they grow, in scent and hue,

Fairest Children of the hours,

Breathe thine influence most divine

On thine own child, Proserpine.”

Shelley

 

Here comes Pluto... 

Pluto, the ruler of the underworld presided over the afterlife. Also believed to be the god of wealth, because mineral wealth was found underground, Pluto ruled the deep earth that contained the seeds necessary for a bountiful harvest. A stern ruler but the loving husband of Persephone (Proserpine, Cora, Pherephatta). The couple received souls in the afterlife, and are invoked together in religious inscriptions. But Pluto’s alter ego, Hades, by contrast, was portrayed as the dark and violent abductor of Persephone.

Contradiction galore.

 

“‘Tis he, ‘tis he : he comes to us

From the depths of Tartarus,

For what of evil doth he roam

From his red and gloomy home,

In the centre of the world,

Where the sinful dead are hurled?

...

          Barry Cornwall

 

Such myths and poetry are far more enticing than say: “Formaldehyde stabilisation facilitating lignin monomer production during biomass depolymerisation.” or “predictable convergence in hemoglobin function has unpredictable molecular underpinnings”.

Science can be such a party-pooper by telling it like it is rather than glorifying lies and simplicity.

Yet smelling the flowers and understanding the mechanics of evolution are essential in dispelling the illusions of our mistaken inventions. 

At some stage in order to cure a disease, or two, someone will have to understand that “a large fraction of human leukocyte antigen class one ligands are proteosome-generated spliced peptides”. 

Some other study will tell us of the evolution of the jaws in fishes, leading us eventually to be able to eat steak and chips. The first record of the evolution of the jaw bones appear in fossils from around 450 million years ago and would evolve from the gnathal plates of placoderms. 

At some stage we need to understand the relationship of light and plants as we study the “photoactivation and inactivation of Arabidopsis cryptochrome 2” 

 

Time to throw in the towel!

 

“my life, immortal though it be,

Is naught ! ‘she cries, ‘for want of thee,

Persephone — Persephone !’”

            Ingelow.

 

Actually sciences are fun. In Big Bang Cosmology, Relativity and Quantum mechanics, we study the reality of the roman god Janus, the imagined god of the past, present and future, patron of all beginings, gates, entrances and war. He was unknown in Greek mythology and he is represented often with two faces, one looking back, one looking forward. Makes sense.

 

Meanwhile our DNA in the proteosme soup keeps the machine going as we feed it with proteins to survive as long as we can or until we decide to slip into the nothingness, in which beauty, pain, truth and lies don’t matter anymore.

 

Gus leonisky

Your local atheistic demigod...

 

the call of the sirens...

 

 

I believe that our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed with monkeys.

             Mark Twain

 

Perfection is a an impossibility in our universe. Perfection is either the complete absence of things — the void — or the entire space of eternity being completely filled up without any possibility of change. Perfection cannot change. No-one’s perfect and this is good, because things can change. With small genetic changes, humans and monkeys evolved from the same stock, itself evolved.

 

Venus and Adonis are idealised visions of what we should desire but will never reach as a whole, in a million years, without plucking or shaving. Nature and the human nature are raw, gritty and demanding. But :

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.

                                   Michelangelo.

 

Thus we need to keep on dreaming high, says he... This is why we push on, daily on the grind of a blunt stone, surviving on stale bread and the fermented juice of the grape. We need to be entertained, not by the truth but by the enticing call of the sirens.

 

Everything existing in the universe is the fruit of chance and necessity

                Democritus

 

Democritus, meaning “chosen of the people”; c. 460 – c. 370 BC) was an influential Ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher primarily remembered today for his formulation of an atomic theory of the universe. 

In chemistry and physics, atomic theory is a scientific theory of the nature of matter, which states that matter is composed of discrete units called atoms. It began as a philosophical concept in ancient Greece and entered the scientific mainstream in the early 19th century when discoveries in the field of chemistry showed that matter did indeed behave as if it were made up of atoms.

The word atom comes from the Ancient Greek adjective atomos, meaning “indivisible”. 19th century chemists began using the term in connection with the growing number of irreducible chemical elements. While seemingly apropos, around the turn of the 20th century, through various experiments with electromagnetism and radioactivity, physicists discovered that the so-called “uncuttable atom” was actually a conglomerate of various subatomic particles (chiefly, electrons, protons and neutrons) which can exist separately from each other. In fact, in certain extreme environments, such as neutron stars, extreme temperature and pressure prevents atoms from existing at all. Since atoms were found to be divisible, physicists later invented the term “elementary particles” to describe the “uncuttable”, though not indestructible, parts of an atom. The field of science which studies subatomic particles is particle physics, and it is in this field that physicists hope to discover the true fundamental nature of matter. Hence came Quantum mechanics.

 

Chance married to necessity creates the unnecessary. 

               Anon.

 

Encourage the innocent amusements.

              Joseph Addison

 

Addison was a poet/writer translator of Virgil’s Georgics and a nobleman. He helped found a strong political and literary association, committed to the furtherance of Whig objectives, the Kitcat Club (possibly named after the mutton pies — kit-kats of the keeper of the house where they met). In 1709 Richard Steele began to bring out Tatler, to which Addison became almost immediately a contributor: thereafter he and Steele started The Spectator, the first number of which appeared on 1 March 1711. This paper, which at first appeared daily, was kept up with a break of about a year and a half when The Guardian took its place until 20 December 1714. His last undertaking was The Freeholder, a political paper, 1715–16.

 

Dr. Arbuthnot wrote an epigram, which hints to another possible origin of the Kitcat Club’s name:

 

Whence deathless Kit-Kat took his name

Few critics can unriddle

Some say from pastrycook it came

And some from Cat and Fiddle.

From no trim beaus its name it boasts

Grey statesmen or green wits

But from the pell-mell pack of toasts

Of old Cats and young Kits.

 

Virgil’s Georgics beginnings:

 

What makes the cornfield smile; beneath what star 

Maecenas, it is meet to turn the sod 

Or marry elm with vine; how tend the steer; 

What pains for cattle-keeping, or what proof 

Of patient trial serves for thrifty bees;- 

Such are my themes.

 

Meanwhile sciences breakdown the codes of proteins, the building blocks of life, relentlessly:

A N-end rule pathway that recognizes proline and destroys gluconeogenic enzymes. etc...

A single human DNA strand is made of more than 408 billion atoms...

 

Time for a coffee break.

 

And here comes the annual portrait bumfight at the AGNSW... This year, only three faces are worth the trip : the others are passable for a local cash-stapped council competition, though they would be rejected for lacking likeness at a Catholic school fete.

 

 

Gus Leonisky

One of The Monkeys as judges of Art, see picture (by Gabriel Cornelius von Max at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gabriel_Cornelius_von_Max,_1840-1915,_Monkeys_as_Judges_of_Art,_1889.jpg. (Gus is the third monkey from the left.)

a beaut night with janus...

 

In ancient Roman religion and myth, Janus is the god of beginnings, gates, transitions, time, duality, doorways, passages, and endings.

 

According the Sydney Symphony Orchestra brochure, “Mahler’s third symphony is more than ‘uplifting’. This symphony is capable of taking you into the stratosphere. Listen to its glorious, radiant finale” ... 

The symphonic work is loosely based on Janus on the loose. My interpretation starts with a lot of openings of gates and some doors closing, with tonnes of bricks falling from time to time in a rustic countryside where a little village of bricks houses nestle in a quiet vale. Come in the wounded from a future war as they see themselves parade like dead skeletons wearing masks in the middle of a charming country fair. A ton of bricks fall on a little sparrow. The swifts catch many flies the size of crows. 

In the second half, the angels with bird-wings make love to demons with bat-wings in a show of universal Christmas peace. The whole lot then feels as if transported to the seaside, where the gentle ripple of the ocean turns into giant waves that calm down as the sun set. 

A lost horn is lost in a forest. Soon garden gnomes and their gnomettes, taunt the horn into barking at the full moon. Meanwhile everyone is asleep at the village — and would be in the audience if a bloody cat was not playing a deliberate counter-note. The rooster cock-a-doodle at 4:47 precisely and the sun rises once more while more tons of bricks fall on poor sparrows, unless it’s a storm of many drums and cymbals which drown the poor harpist travails. The last lightning destroys everything. Beaut.

I saw our Republican (capital R) President at the performance for which I had tickets from a friend of friends who both could not attend. Lucky me. Hey, I cannot afford full price tickets... Paul Keating was fleetingly statuesque like the young immortal Robespierre of the French revolution in search of biffo with the establishment, before the Reign of Terror:

A member of the Estates-General, the Constituent Assembly and the Jacobin Club, Robespierre was an outspoken advocate for the poor and for democratic institutions. He campaigned for universal male suffrage in France, price controls on basic food commodities and the abolition of slavery in the French colonies. He was an ardent opponent of the death penalty, but played an important role in arranging the execution of King Louis XVI, which led to the establishment of a French Republic. One does not make a democratic omelette without breaking eggs.

Paul Keating in a Mahler aficionado and he is apparently mad about clocks. Time is precious.

I did not see the noble dilettante Elizabethan republican (small r), (sir, not quite yet) Malcolm Turnbull. I think he was busy gluing his tiny royal (small r) arse on the PMship chair, on this glorious Mahler night, after having placed a whoopee cushion under Tony Abbott’s Royal attempts at branch-stacking of the North Shore.

 

 

Gus Leonisky

Your local music critic.

 

Music was invented to deceive and delude mankind.

                               Ephorus (author of the first universal "history")

 

I love it!

      Gus leonisky (revisionist)