dad may have been right: March 2006

dad may have been right

a horrible sinking feeling as you drift to sleep

Thursday, March 30, 2006

In our last adventure...

I was pandering on about the second law of thermodynamics, and how human beings seem to dance, everso breifly, in an opposing tune to it, and then posing the query that if our ability to codify our thoughts via pen and paint and ink and the digital medium violates the conservation of energy.

I wish to continue in this vein for a moment or two. If we choose to say that the formation of ideas, which, after all, are simply electrical impulses across denrites and axoms and so forth, are not actually whole cloth creation of something completely new, that is to say, we accept non sub solum es novum, then we are beginning to tread, at least philiosopically on some very Pieper grounds. That is to say we are accepting that these ideas and thoughts have all been had before, and that perchance all we are doing is not actually having them, but somehow, tapping into a universal fount, and taking a ladleful of ideas and concepts out to use for our own purposes.

This is, of course, a rather humbling idea, and keeping with science on the whole and it's conception that we are very small, the universe is very large, and probability allows for this. We know that an infinite set of monkeys at an infinite set of typewriters will produce all the great works ever to be written, but do we actually accept what the consequences of this are? It is, after all, a bit of a shattering conception.

We cannot create ideas? Only tap into something that has already been created somewhere, thereby conserving energy and ensuring that omega remails at or close to one? Then where do these ideas reside? A pool somewhere? Part of a universal pulse of energy? God? It's very scary ground, and adds to it the possibility that, if you carry it far enough, that since we cannot create a new thought or idea, and are only accessing them, that perhaps our thoughs are simply our own way of justifying actions already predetermined. Aw snap. I went there.

The alternative, that we can spin new energy, and concepts and thoughts out of the void is also very very nice, inasmuch as it frees us from one disturbing line of thinking. Of course, it then raises the question of what exactly allows us to this while we are alive, what would let us create this energy, hold it in place, and codify it? The soul? And, if that is the case, if this energy and matter that are ideas can be codified, what happens to the part of us that can create it when we die? Does it boil away, left with no meat to fuel its engines, or does it dissape and rejoin that master fount I was mentioning earlier?

These are the reasons I don't sleep sometimes, and occasionally stare off into space.

spouted by Johnny @ 4:34 PM 3 comments

Thursday, March 23, 2006

Musings.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that "in all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves the system, the potential energy of the state will always be less than that of the initial state." This is also commonly referred to as entropy. A watchspring-driven watch will run until the potential energy in the spring is converted, and not again until energy is reapplied to the spring to rewind it. A car that has run out of gas will not run again until you walk 10 miles to a gas station and refuel the car. Once the potential energy locked in carbohydrates is converted into kinetic energy (energy in use or motion), the organism will get no more until energy is input again. In the process of energy transfer, some energy will dissipate as heat. Entropy is a measure of disorder: cells are NOT disordered and so have low entropy. The flow of energy maintains order and life. Entropy wins when organisms cease to take in energy and die.

This is a nice, brief explination of the 2nd law of thermodynamics I found online.

I bring it up becuase I wonder exactly how it applies when looked at through the lens of vacuum-genesis creation. That particular theory of the creation of the universe states that the universe is, at the moment of the Planck epoch, a spontaneous quantum particle of incredible density. That is to say, the universe at the moment of it's expansions start was essentially a highly ordered, supersymmetrical particle that sprang into existance, as many particles do, out of a vacuum, due to quantum probability (if this seems unlikely, bear in mind that it is that very quantum effect that allows the sun to bypass Coulombs Law and permit hydrogen fusion to occur and actually burn its fuel at a rate that keeps it from imploding) So, we have the universe as a spontaneous vacuum flucuation, springing from nothing to existance(This is also a theory, but one I am fond of) and then, that protoparticle bursts apart ABT and thermodynamics and everything else takes hold.

Hooray for setting the stage.

Now, we know that entropy will prevail, eventually, despite anyones best efforts. So the energy of the universe can never go up, only down. Which means we are in a winding down clock. Or at least, really in a world of hurt. Cosmologically speaking.

Lets go to Earth now. Here we are, as human beings, having babies. We convert food into poop, and occaionally, should we be knocked up, into other humans. Food into poop, I understand thermodynamically, it is a clear application, and even covered in the bloody definition I posted. My issue comes with human reproduction. And it isn't exactly with reproduction, but the result of reproduction.

Once a human being is gestating, it is in the process of being created. Energy from the mother is siphoned off, and instead of being utilized immedately and excreted, is stored and applied towards creating order, not disorder, and constructing, painstakingly, a new creature, a new function in the great balancing equation of the universe.

Of course, after birth, and after a certain point, the human body begins to break down again, and eventually gives over to entopy, so of course, it is never truly overcome. Yet for a period of time, it appears that we violate entropy, creating a new life out of energy taken in, and at the moment of birth, all the arguing semantics cannot deny the spark of life has been fired, and for a brief moment, a new energy, regardless of violating the second law, has been wrought, that is to say, a new conciousness.

The question that I wrestle with is this: do we, and by extension, any sentient life, violate thermodynamics, by virtue of our mind, thoughts and conciousness? We do not with our bodies, as any visit to a nursing home can show. Are we though, with our minds? And, more disturbingly, are we with our soul? Or is our ability to seemingly violate this (by my perception) a function of the mind/soul, and a development of the universe itself, a form of Macro-evolution?

Are ideas and thoughts and conceptions created by humans, or any other sentient life new energy and form given to a swirl of entopic matter that we have the ability to process, or, as a held and established Law that governs the universe states, are we only somehow accessing something that is already there, since things cannot simply arise new, whole cloth in a universe that is winding down?

Thats what I am working on now.

spouted by Johnny @ 3:33 PM 2 comments

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

De asini umbra disceptare

I arrived last night around 12 in the morning. All in all, it was indeed a hard time. Between planning a mass, writing a eulogy, and doing many other things, I essentially got to run a 3 day wake, and then a funeral. It was a very nice affair.

The afters were plenty stressful, and will negotiation continues. I may have to go back to help iron things out, since I am the only one on my side of the family who gets along with my step-grandmother, So much so that she gave me, and refused to give my uncle, both my grandfathers wedding band, which he wed my grandmother with, and the flag it was his right to be buried with. I of course gave them to him as soon as I acquired possession.

I also recieved 3 job offers while down there, 2 of those in writing, which is very very frustrating. One is on staff at my cousins offices in Albany, essentially doing spin-work and being a liason while she is in NYC, and the other is a position at the old Bank I was with, except this time as an actual investment rep, not a teller. The one that wasn't in writing, oddly enough, came in the form of a phonecall from John Golden, who owns the Gleason's chain of Funeral homes, who asked me to consider coming to work with him about 3 days after the wake. It is rather reaffirming to discover it may not be me, but actually my location, that sucks, vis-a-vis finding a decent job. A shocker, to be sure. After we pick our collective jaws up, lets all move on.

All in all, my 2 trips down to New York gave me some interesting and new perspectives. Of course, standing next to a dead man for 4 days, and then watching as everyone begins to act in ways unbecoming will do that. I am sad to say that my sense of humor and patience have taken a hit, only time will tell if that is permanent or not.

So I have yet another thing to thank my grandfather for. And the list is already long.

spouted by Johnny @ 2:57 PM 2 comments

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

wierd.

i just had to delete a post that was totally messing with my format. No idea why.

spouted by Johnny @ 11:44 AM 0 comments

whee.

I've been in New York, for good old family reasons. Which I reaaly do not mind, as I would rather be inconvenienced than feel badly if I did not get to see someone before they died. And as an added bonus, my parents paid for it. So yippee.

In the news, South Dakota has banned abortion, even in cases of rape or incest, except for in cases of extreme danger to the woman, in which case the law requires the Doctor to try every possible option that preserves the life of the child too. Oh, and they say that life begins at conception. Every sperm is sacred and so on. As is common knowledge for those who follow, the timing of this was impeccable, waiting until the President had appointed Uncle Sam(who said in a recent letter to tht=e Christian Coalition that he would remember every day and case to 'honor the trust that was put in me' by them. Gee. I really wonder what that means) and then institute legislation that directly contradicts Roe V. Wade. My prediction? 2007, before March Roe V. Wade bites it. That's if Planned Parenthood and NARAL do not push to get it up there faster. Super.

Mississippi is posed to do the same.

The Patriot Act was renewed.

There was a bunch of other things that happened too.

And suchlike.

spouted by Johnny @ 11:02 AM 0 comments

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