New Year 2011

Photo by August O'Connor

Happy New Year 2011! It's traditional on Jan 1 to celebrate in explosive ways, to review the old year and express hopes for the new. My explosive celebrations this year were private and inconclusive so I'll confine myself to quantum tantric reviews and hopes.

Most impressive creation this year was URGE: a short opera about reality--the kind of crazy inspiration that makes you wonder about the nature of the Muse. Is she perverse or what?

Also put together sound track and story board for late genius animator Randy Hamm's Benjamin Bunny Faces Reality--a three-minute cartoon voyage into quantum reality.

Not lacking were a handful of poems from Her Mysterious Grace this year including:

Opening Night

He Did Not Die

Quantum Jujitsu

Harlot Nature

Natura Naturans

Jabir Meets Earth's Underlords

Just Ask
Jabir's Formula
Tantric Table of the Elements

Reports from the quantum frontiers included a new "proof" of the existence of the multiverse by Frank Tipler, the discovery by Adan Cabello of a quantum effect that gets bigger as the size of the system increases, an attempt by Nicolas Gisin to involve human eyes in quantum-entangled systems, a report on a new touch sensor for robots that uses quantum tunneling, and four preposterous devices that prematurely attempted to jump-start the new science of quantum tantra.

For your amusement there's a few short Celtic music performances from a St Paddy's Day party and from the Santa Cruz Scottish Games. Also a report on a trip to the magical city of Amsterdam and a visit to the MBARI open house at Moss Landing. Plus one more Ferdinand Feghoot story.

But wait, wait, there's more! For sheer comic genius nothing could match Les Blatt's historic, hysterical Stanford Physics Department parody of My Fair Lady. Five stars plus the Andromeda galaxy!

The price of getting older is the loss of old friends to Mr Death. This year four good friends took that journey to that country from which none return:

Earl Crockett

George Leonard

James P Hogan

Henry Dakin

On the other hand there were honors for those of us who survived. Brilliant experimental physicist John Clauser was awarded the Wolf Prize for his elucidation of quantum entanglement. Nick made the semi-finals of the 3-Quarks-Daily poetry contest with The New Sex Robot. MIT historian of science David Kaiser completed his book: How the Hippies Saved Physics, and both Michael Murphy, co-founder of Esalen Institute, and my first wife Philippa Meyering celebrated their eightieth birthdays.

My wish for 2011 is for this to be the year that some imaginative physicist working in the area of quantum entanglement (for instance myself, Anton Zeilinger, Nicolas Gisin or Charles Bennett) will discover/invent some clever quantum twist that entangles human consciousness with various other minds in the universe. I wish this year for nothing less than the birth of an entirely new science--a science that totally transforms our vision of ourselves and reality. If the quantum tradition is respected, this new discovery can be expected to be a model of unambiguous mathematical clarity and possessed of a weird and inhuman beauty.