LSD is the Hubble

Muzuzuzus reports:
(check out his beautiful site)

I was watching a good talk yesterday from one of the videos freely available at Fred Alan Wolf's page.

There was Robert Kuhn as main chair, and Fred Wolf, David Chalmers, couple of materialists, a parapsychologist--the only woman (Marilyn Schlitz of IONS), and they were talking about consciousness.

Yet not once did I hear psychedelics mentioned!!

But I heard lots of "In about 100 years we should really understand consciousness".

Nick responds:

Speaking about consciousness
Without mentioning psychedelics
Is like speaking about astronomy
Without mentioning telescopes.

LSD IS THE HUBBLE
(for Sasha and Ann Shulgin)

LSD is the Hubble.

Psilocybin mushrooms
are the big Earth-based Kecks
that grow on Mauna Kea's slopes.

And humble marijuana/Mary Jane?
She is a million curious amateurs
with home-made telescopes.

Empathogenic MDMA:
heart-wave steerable
radio-frequency array.

Crystal DMT: deep inner Voyager
Proceed with caution
Fasten your seat belt
Learn to speak Martian.

Want to see outside your bubble?
LSD is the Hubble.

Photo: Joy, Illinois 1967
by Philippa Meyering

Yoniverse

yoniverse
a gateway in the netherlands
to that place
from which we came

Letter to Juliano

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

John Coltrane's Penny Whistle Tapes

My friend Max Hoff is a fan of both James Joyce and John Coltrane. During the legendary Bistro Poetry Era in Boulder Creek, Max would often entertain by reciting large sections of Finnegans Wake (pictured above) which he had memorized. Max played Joyce's words like an instrument which is not surprising since the saxophone is alleged to be the instrument most closely resembling the human voice and Max is a master of the sax. Some of Max's best sax performances can be heard at the Church of Saint John Coltrane in San Francisco where Max is a Deacon.

Imagine my glee when I discovered on the web a review of an album of John Coltrane playing the penny whistle. I could hardly wait to tell Max. In addition to critical examination of each of the tracks the reviewer explained the circumstances of this rare recording:

As is often the case with revelatory musical discoveries, the story behind the sounds is nearly as fascinating as the music itself. While convalescing at his home in the rut of the liminal period before his stint with Monk, Coltrane discovered an odd relic in a basement crate. The property of his deceased great-uncle Thaddeus, the crate contained an impressive collection of vintage 78s along with various personal effects- among them a tarnished brass penny whistle.

Coltrane, still weak from his recent struggle with smack, used the whistle as a means of strengthening his embouchure and breath capacity. In the bargain he realized its convincing musical potential as well. Anxious to invite friends over for jam sessions, but still too physically diminished to hoist his regular horn, Coltrane set up a primitive portable cassette recorder and single microphone (both on loan from his Jersey friend Rudy Van Gelder) and taped many of the living room whistle performances for personal study.

Shortly after reading this review I was bottling wine with Max at the Ahlgren Vineyards a few miles north of Boulder Creek and asked him if he had ever listened to Coltrane's penny whistle performances. "No way," exclaimed Max. "Coltrane never played the whistle." Ha. Ha. I had evidence Max was wrong and bet him $5.00 that a record of Coltrane's whistle sessions existed, put out by an obscure record label in Provo, Utah.

I lost that bet. In my excitement I failed to note the date of the review.

The Big Dream

This morning I had a Really Big Dream. Just woke from it so while it's fresh inside my mind and my body I thought I'd tell it to you.

I'm in some kind of low-life America flea market in a big vacant lot surrounded by homes and am piling lots of stuff into the back of my Subaru, interacting with urchins and folk and in the chaos I somehow acquire an artificial woman. She is fully clothed, can't speak, but she's obviously very much alive, like some great big pet animal. She is tall, busty, has long dark hair, dressed like a civilized gypsy and has a very intense look in her soulful brown eyes. She makes soft, inarticulate sounds, and her body feels warm and responsive through her dress.

She didn't have a name but let's call her Lola.

One of the matriarchs at the flea market offers to train Lola by installing her in a Muslim whore house so she is taken from me and next thing I know am sitting in the corner of the anteroom of a Muslim whorehouse.

Neatly dressed Muslim men (and young boys too!) are milling around in the anteroom. None are in robes, all in old-fashioned Western dress. Lots of snappy suits and fedora hats, like the outfits worn by gangsters in "Guys and Dolls".

It's obvious that I am located near the EXIT to Lola's room because all of the men and boys (all clothed) are filled with awe, talking quietly to one another in a language I cannot understand. One big mute Muslim stands next to me with an unlit cigarette in his hand.

Some of the men and most of the boys when they come out of Lola's corridor make a gesture I have never seen before which I interpret as a religious gesture, a kind of Muslim Sign of the Cross.

The gesture looks like this. You raise your fingers to your lips as if to kiss them and then place that hand on your heart. The gesture was made casually as if practiced hundreds of times. Not all of the men made this gesture but most of the little boys did. I interpreted it as a sign of religious awe, as if one had just encountered God, or some high religious Master.

I suddenly become aware of the Muslim standing next to me with his unlit cigarette. Hatless, bald, in shirtsleeves, built like a bouncer. Sitting in my chair with a nylon sport jacket on my lap, I look up at him and go through my jacket's many pockets looking for a lighter. As I am searching for my lighter, the Muslim bends down and whispers to me in perfect English: "How is she able to know just what we want? Is she picking up electromagnetic signals from our brains?"

"I don't know," I answer. "My guess is the more men she's with the better she knows what men are looking for."

Then I wake from the crowded anteroom into my little bedroom in Boulder Creek--my black cat Onyx curled up asleep near my feet. Stunned. Half of me is still in that anteroom talking to Abdul.

Dream reminded me a bit of my poem: The New Sex Robot. Also motivates me now to spend more time at flea markets and garage sales.

Evolution of Desire

From J Orlin Grabbe

99 Names of Goddess

(Click to Expand)

99 Names of Goddess

She is the Beginning and the End
She is Galaxy and Garden
She is the Sun and the Moon
She is Atom and the Void
She is Wisdom personified
She is Sophia

She is Annie, Allegra, Allison, Athena and Alex
She is Beverly, Betsy, Bobbie, Bella and Beth.

She is the Earth and the Sea
She is Fire and Ice
She is Energy and Time
She is Root and Bloom
She is Beauty embodied
She is Aphrodite

She is Carla, Carol, Cindy, Christine and Kate
She is Donna, Diana, Denby, Dorcas and Dannie

She is Pain and Pleasure
She is Bear, Butterfly, Octopus and Eel
She is Prairie Grass and Marijuana
She is Sound and Sight
She is Smell, Taste and Touch
She is Life on the Loose
She is Daphne

She is Marilyn, Margie, Marsha, Mary,
Marie, Magdalena
She is Laura, Louise, Liane, Lena, Lise and Lorraine

She is Darkness and Light
She is Consciousness and Slumber
She is Silver and Gold
She is Magnesium, Tungsten, Lithium, Lead
She is Carbon, Argon, Niobium and Starlight
She is the Space Between the Stars
She is the Angel of Death
She is Kali

She is Sheila. Sherry, Sharma, Stephanie,
Stella & Sarah
She is Salima, Shelly, Suzie, Lila, Ceci & Mollie
She is Andra, Patty, Elaine, Elizabeth, Karen, Philippa
She is Debbie, Isabel, Ida, Nancy. Janice, JoAnn

She in Unnameable, Unspeakable
She is Terror and Bliss
She is Nourishment and Intoxication
She is the Ocean and the Source
She is the Mother of Animals
She is the Juice in Things
She is Shakti

She is Illusion and Reality
White and Black
Male and Female
Birth and Death
She is the Wild Muse that inspires us
She is the Mystery that surrounds us
She is Everything and Nothingness
She is the Beginning and the End.

Nick Moves to BC--Moon Day 1969

In July of 1969--the same day Man landed on the Moon--Betsy Rasumny and I moved to our house north of Boulder Creek where I've lived for more then forty years.

At that time I was living in Palo Alto--the solar plexus of Silicon Valley and Betsy had been living for a year in New Mexico--the legendary Land of Enchantment.

I was working then as senior physicist at Memorex in Santa Clara investigating magnetic and optical media with a research group that included Tad Konar, a Pole who'd spent 63 months in Auschwitz. Betsy was living in a high meadow near El Rito, NM, with a rock band called Daddy Longlegs and hanging out with artists, Native Americans, hippies and peyote church people. When I drove to New Mexico to bring her back to Boulder Creek, she introduced me to her artist friends and I took her, dressed in her best hippy finery, to visit a controlled fusion lab at Los Alamos.

Now (2009) Boulder Creek is mostly a bedroom community for Silicon Valley but in 1969 the one hour drive over winding mountain roads placed it outside the range of convenient commuting to Xerox PARC. Instead Boulder Creek was outlaw territory--a place to fire your guns, ride your Harley and score controlled substances. Below our little house an ex-chief of police of Santa Cruz had a firing range and above our house a self-styled outlaw and his friends tested out semi-automatic weapons. (Ironically this well-armed dude subscribed to a magazine called Western Outlaw.) Two doors down, at the end of our dead-end road, lived a drug dealer with a coopful of chickens (which I inherited when he moved away), a wild pig in a pen and a girlfriend with a pair of Afghan hounds. Now the only trace of these wild days in my neighborhood is an upscale couple who ride a pair of Harleys. Hardly outlaws: she works for the Harley newsletter and he programs Apple computers for a Catholic school over the hill.

When we moved here on Moon Day, the town was full of bars, Simoni's, the Shalimar, a family bar called Joe's and an outlaw biker bar called the Boulder Club. Now most of those colorful lowlife hangouts have disappeared. In downtown BC today, only Joe's Bar remains. (Joe's was used as a set for the movie Welcome to Buzzsaw.)

Joe's Bar, which is located on BC's Main Street, is usually crowded inside but outside a few regulars set up chairs on the sidewalk to smoke, drink and converse in the open air. This impromptu cafe' is still a tradition at Joe's. The clientele has changed a lot since the "old days". Then it was mainly "stumpers" (loggers and related woodsmen) and conservative retirees. Now Joe's consists of a pretty mixed bunch.

Even tho I was a PhD physicist I suspect the locals at Joe's perceived me (see above) as one of the encroaching hippy hordes who were then beginning to take advantage of the low rents and rural nature of BC. In any case, as I was walking past Joe's a few weeks after Betsy and I had moved in, a man got up from his chair on the sidewalk and handed me a piece of paper. I just put it in my pocket and walked on. And read it later at home. The paper (see below) was an altered cartoon from the New Yorker which depicted Boulder Creek as the Xenophobic Capital of the USA. I considered it terribly funny and felt honored to be welcomed to Boulder Creek by the natives in this back-handed way.

Quantum Tic Tac Toe

Quantum mechanics is notoriously difficult to understand because our species evolved in a classical world. Even physicists who are familiar with the quantum math still experience this world classically. Niels Bohr believed that this would always be the case. "No matter how far the explanation of quantum phenomena transcends classical notions, " Bohr said, "the results of all experiments must be expressed in classical terms." In order to think like Nature thinks we must learn to think quantum-mechanically. But where can we go to exercise our minds with quantum experiences?

Recently Alan Goff, a researcher at Novatia Labs, invented a quantum version of tic tac toe which he presented at the unlikely venue of a meeting of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Perhaps Goff hoped that insights gained from playing quantum tic tac toe might lead to breakthroughs in space propulsion physics. Later he published an account of his new quantum game in American Journal of Physics which is primarily directed towards physics teachers and welcomes clear reviews and novel presentations of complex ideas. AJP is Nick's favorite physics journal.

Goff has a blog called Alan Goff's Entanglements where he discusses quantum TTT and other topics.

If you want to learn to play quantum TTT, the rules are published here, along with a Java applet that maps all the moves in real time.

In a nutshell, on each turn, a player marks two squares at once with two "spooky marks". One square can be occupied by any number of spooky marks, in which case the marks are said to be "entangled". The play proceeds, each player marking the board with two spooky marks until player A makes a move which creates a "cyclic entanglement". Then player B chooses how that entanglement will "collapse" into "real marks" that can only occupy one square at a time as in classical TTT. After collapsing the cycle (and all "stems" entangled with that cycle) B makes the usual "spooky move" on any remaining two squares that do not contain collapsed marks. The game ends when one or both players gains a three-in-a-row of collapsed marks just as in classical TTT.

Quantum TTT is in many respects a nice metaphor for quantum reality. Before observation, a quantum particle can be in two places at once and be entangled with other particles in an instantaneous kind of connection impossible in the classical world. In the quantum world as in quantum TTT, a "collapse" which depends partly on the observer's choice and partly not turns spooky possibility into concrete actuality. In both the quantum world and in quantum TTT, an action in the future can seem to affect the past, but in either case no time-travel paradoxes arise.

I live in a redwood forest surrounded by trees. Inside each green leaf or needle are trillions of chloroplasts containing two kinds of chlorophyll--antenna chlorophyll which is specialized for absorbing light energy and reaction chlorophyll which is specialized for using energy to drive the chemical reactions that build the tree. Mediating between the antenna CHPHL and the reaction CHPHL are an array of transfer molecules. Up until a few years ago it was believed that a photon absorbed by an antenna CHPHL tranferred its energy to the reaction CHPHLs via a classical random walk among the intervening transfer molecules till its energy happened to reach a reaction site or was lost. Now researchers have discovered that something analogous to a quantum tic tac toe game is going on inside every green leaf on this planet. Instead of following one path at random the photonic excitation takes many spooky paths at once till one of these paths touches a reaction site which collapses it and makes it real.

In the words of one of these chlorophyll researchers: "This wavelike characteristic of the energy transfer within the photosynthetic complex can explain its extreme efficiency, in that it allows the complexes to sample vast areas of phase space to find the most efficient path."

When you look up into the trees, can't you imagine a torrent of solar photons each triggering a spooky quantum TTT move that is efficiently sampling "vast areas of phase space"? Her everyday quantum subtlety multiplied trillions upon trillions of time in every green plant is one more reason to praise the goddess chlorophyll from whom so many of our blessings flow.

The Day The Saucers Came

THE DAY THE SAUCERS CAME

That day, the saucers landed.
Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky
like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and stared
as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed to find
what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing
if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn't notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came,
by some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living,
and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day,
which was the zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-man's nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold,
and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away,
and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling gods day
the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true brave hearts
and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across the land,
and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day,
the day the great winds came
And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day
the Computers turned,
the screens telling us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes
and arrival of the Time Machine day,
You didn't notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not even reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.


-----Neil Gaiman-----