Don’t be concerned about being disloyal to your pain by being joyous.

— Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

Only selflessness is real

«Le premier devoir du chef est d’être aimé sans séduire. Être aimé sans séduire, même soi.»

“The most important thing for a leader is to make himself loved without pandering to anyone, even himself.”

— André Malraux, born this day in 1901

Dans un univers passablement absurde, il y a quelque chose qui
 n’est pas absurde, c’est ce que l’on peut faire pour les autres.

LIGO and LISA

Gravity waves are potentially a new eye on the sky, complementing light-based telescopes and radio telescopes to see things they cannot.  Gravity waves could detect the distribution of ‘dark matter’ about which nothing is known (because it is dark).  Gravity waves could peek inside the clouds of gas and stars where black holes form; and it’s even possible that gravity waves could teach us something about the big bang.

But gravity waves’ effects are very weak.  Very very weak.  Very very very weak.  The distortion in space-time when a gravity wave passes through from a catastrophic event in another galaxy is about 1 part in 10²¹. So if your gravity wave telescope is a 2-mile evacuated tube, then you’re looking for changes in the tube length that are 100 million times smaller than an atom, or 1,000 times smaller than a proton in the center of the atom.  That’s LIGO, located at twin sites in Washington State and Louisiana, so that monitors can throw out the false signals that might arise in one site but not the other.

How do you measure motions 100 million times smaller than an atom?  They do it with mirrors.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could space your mirrors 2 million miles apart instead of 2 miles apart?  That’s the plan for LISA:  three identical satellites to be launched into orbit around the sun, spaced in an equilateral triangle 5 million KM on a side, each bouncing laser light off mirrors on the other two, picking it up again when it returns half a minute later, roughly.

Consider the octopus
The world’s most intelligent invertebrate carries 2/3 of its brain in its feet,
and the other third wrapped around its stomach.

Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory and University of Washington researchers found that the skin of the cuttlefish Sepia officinalis, a color-changing cousin of octopuses, contains gene sequences usually expressed only in the light-sensing retina of the eye. In other words, cephalopods—octopuses, cuttlefish, and squid—may be able to see with their skin.

The American philosopher Thomas Nagel once wrote a famous paper titled “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” Bats can see with sound. Like dolphins, they can locate their prey using echoes. Nagel concluded it was impossible to know what it’s like to be a bat. And a bat is a fellow mammal like us—not someone who tastes with its suckers, sees with its skin, and whose severed arms can wander about, each with a mind of its own. Nevertheless, there are researchers still working diligently to understand what it’s like to be an octopus.

— Article in Orion by Sy Montgomery

Sublime Generosity

I was dead, then alive.
Weeping, then laughing.

The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star.

He said, ‘You’re not mad enough.
You don’t belong in this house.’

I went wild and had to be tied up.
He said, ‘Still not wild enough
to stay with us!’

I broke through another layer
into joyfulness.

He said, ‘Its not enough.’
I died.

He said, ‘You are a clever little man,
full of fantasy and doubting.’

I plucked out my feathers and became a fool.
He said, ‘Now you are the candle
for this assembly.’

But I’m no candle. Look!
I’m scattered smoke

He said, ‘You are the Sheikh, the guide.’
But I’m not a teacher. I have no power.

He said, ‘You already have wings.
I cannot give you wings.’

But I wanted his wings.
I felt like some flightless chicken.

Then new events said to me,
‘Don’t move. A sublime generosity is
coming towards you.’

And old love said, ‘Stay with me.’

I said, ‘I will.’

You are the fountain of the sun’s light.
I am a willow shadow on the ground.
You make my raggedness silky.

The soul at dawn is like darkened water
that slowly begins to say Thank you, thank you.

Then at sunset, again, Venus gradually
Changes into the moon and then the whole nightsky.

This comes of smiling back
at your smile.

The chess master says nothing,
other than moving the silent chess piece.

That I am part of the ploys
of this game makes me
amazingly happy.
.
— Rumi, rendered by Coleman Barks

A rich nation

The people of the United States and their government are made artificially poor by our monetary system, and the banks that control it.  40% of everything we buy is siphoned off by banks.  50% of everything the Federal government spends money on is siphoned off by the banks.  We have ceded power and $ to the Fed.

Governments - state and federal - could bypass the interest tab by setting up their own publicly owned banks. Banking would become a public utility, a tool for promoting productivity and trade rather than for extracting wealth from the debtor class.

Congress could go further: it could reclaim the power to issue money from the banks and fund its budget directly. It could do this, in fact, without changing any laws.

— Article by Ellen Brown

Brown goes on to suggest that the Federal government could use its expanded riches to fulfill FDR’s vision:

• End poverty
• Provide guaranteed employment for all
• Universal health coverage

...and imagine what we could fund if we desisted from war.

19 Kisses

Johannes Secundus, born 500 years ago this day, died before his 25th birthday, and left us 19 poems, all on the bliss of the kiss, and each one presaging his own death.  This is #4:

’Tis not a Kiss you give, my Love!
’Tis richest nectar from above!
A fragrant show’r of balmy dews,
Which thy sweet lips alone diffuse!
’Tis ev’ry aromatic breeze
That wafts from Afric’s spicy trees!
’Tis honey from the ozier hive,
Which chymist bees with care derive
From all the newly-open’d flow’rs
That bloom in Cecrops’ roseate bow’rs,
Or from the breathing sweets that grow
On fam’d Hymettus’ thymy brow:
But if such kisses you bestow,
If from your lips such raptures flow,
Thus blest! supremely blest by thee!
Ere long I must immortal be;
Must taste on earth those joys that wait
The banquets of celestial state.
Then cease thy bounty, dearest fair!
Such precious gifts, then, spare! oh spare!
Or, if I must immortal prove,
Be thou immortal, too, my love!
For, should the heav’nly Pow’rs request
My presence at th’ ambrosial feast;
Nay, should they Jove himself dethrone,
And yield to me his radiant crown;
I’d scorn it all, nor would I deign
O’er golden realms of bliss to reign:
Jove’s radiant crown I’d scorn to wear,
Unless thou mightst such honours share;
Unless thou, too, with equal sway.
Mightst rule with me the realm of day.

— in an 18th century translation from the Latin by AN (?),
    whom I have not been able to identify

Travel

For many years, at great cost, I traveled through many countries, saw the high mountains, the oceans. The only things I did not see were the sparkling dewdrops in the grass just outside my door.

— Rabindranath Tagore

The most famous scientist you’ve never heard of

Born 300 years ago today, Mikhail Lomonosov was surely Russia's first modern scientist, yet he remains strangely unknown outside his homeland.

He was one of the most far-sighted, polymathic and colourful scientists who ever lived. Far-sighted, because he pioneered the use of quantitative research methods. Polymathic, because though he died at just 53 he contributed to physics, chemistry, astronomy, metallurgy, mining, poetry, literature, mosaics, glassblowing, meteorology, electricity, grammar and history – and built a chemical laboratory, glass factory and flying machine. Colourful, because of irreverent antics and a hot temper.
— Robert Crease writing for Physics World

Lomonosov debunked the popular phlogiston theory – that heat was a form of matter and had weight – by heating metals in a vacuum and then in air, comparing the mass before and after.  He created a huge mosaic depicting the Battle of Poltava.  He also wrote poetry.

Aviary

At dawn a complaining crow awakens me
you have already left our bed,
placing a kiss upon my cheek
before going downstairs

I remember the cool wet mark
your lips left behind
and the sweetness of your skin
before I drift back to sleep

Why am I ungrateful
for the little pleasures
always wanting more?

What will soothe the cawing
that claws at my throat
resolving it into song?
Are not my own silky black feathers
magnificence enough?

In my dream, the nagging crow
becomes a mockingbird, and then a dove
and a strutting rooster and
a robin, celebrating the innocence of a new day.

I awake with sun in my window
shining full upon my face.

— Kathryn Hunt, Enid Kassner, Josh Mitteldorf

Gratitude

“Gratitude or thankfulness is love’s desire or endeavor to do good to someone who has done us a service out of an equal love affect.”

— Baruch Spinoza, born this day in 1632

Biology ¹ physics

These two articles appeared come from unrelated sources, but their messages cohere. The first affirms reasons to doubt the notion that our mental activity is some kind of sophisticated computation, or that computers can ever become flexibly intelligent, let alone conscious. The second is an interview about the way in which animals experience the world, and what we might know of animal consciousness.

Namit Arora: The Minds of Machines
Tim Crane: Animal Minds

Hymn of the Earth

My highway is unfeatured air,
My consorts are the sleepless stars,
And men my giant arms upbear,
My arms unstained and free from scars.

I rest forever on my way,
Rolling around the happy Sun;
My children love the sunny day,
But noon and night to me are one.

My heart has pulses like their own,
I am their mother, and my veins,
Though built of the enduring stone,
Thrill as do theirs with godlike pains.

The forests and the mountains high,
The foaming ocean and the springs,
The plains O pleasant Company,
My voice through all your anthem rings.

Ye are so cheerful in your minds,
Content to smile, content to share:
My being in your chorus finds
The echo of the spheral air.

No leaf may fall, no pebble roll,
No drop of water lose the road;
The issues of the general Soul
Are mirrored in its round abode.

— William Ellery Channing, born this day in 1818