I bring together fun-loving,
thoughtfully curious and
dynamically creative people!
That’s the possibility I bring to
clients’ businesses. ~ DM
I think with intuition. The basis of true thinking is intuition. Indeed, it is not intellect, but intuition which advances humanity. Intuition tells a man his purpose in life. One never goes wrong following his feelings. I don’t mean emotions, I mean feelings, for feelings and intuition are one.
~ Albert Einstein (b 1879)
To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not
know, that is true knowledge.
~ Nicolaus Copernicus (b 1473), polymath: astrologer, astronomer, heliocentric cosmologist, classical scholar, economist, diplomat, cleric, physician, jurist, govenor
One of the three philosophies in metaphysics is cosmology: The study of the origin and evolution of Universe, especially with such of its characteristics as space, time, causality, and choice.
Besides mathematical equations and scientific interpretations, cosmology is philosophies and stories telling how the physical Universe and our planetary home have influenced biotic forms over millennia. One’s personal cosmology distinguishes trainings and educations, relations with other humans and other biotic forms in local geographical environs. ~ DM
“And what does [war] amount to?” said Satan, with his evil chuckle. “Nothing at all. You gain nothing; you always come out where you went in. For a million years the race has gone on monotonously propagating itself and monotonously reperforming this dull nonsense—to what end? No wisdom can guess! Who gets a profit out of it? Nobody but a parcel of usurping little monarchs and nobilities who despise you; would feel defiled if you touched them; would shut the door in your face if you proposed to call; whom you slave for, fight for, die for, and are not ashamed of it, but proud; whose existence is a perpetual insult to you and you are afraid to resent it; who are mendicants supported by your alms, yet assume toward you the airs of benefactor toward beggar; who address you in the language of master to slave, and are answered in the language of slave
to master; who are worshiped by you with your mouth, while in your heart—if you have one—you despise yourselves for it. The first man was a hypocrite and a coward, qualities which have not yet failed in his line; it is the foundation upon which all civilizations have been built. Drink to their perpetuation! Drink to their augmentation!...”
~ Mark Twain (b Samuel Langhorne Clemens 1835), Excerpts from The Mysterious Stranger, refer A History of War
Sometimes click videos twice to begin.
Planet Earth viewed by high definition from space | duration 6:57
¹ “When you’re trying to understand the world, there are two approaches you can have.
“One kind of approach is that when you try to look at the world, you come with a precondition. You come with a set of demands that the world tell a story that’s flattering to you.
“The other thing you could do is come with an authentically open mind and open heart, and expand many different hypotheses and compare them to the evidence. Accept what the evidence tells you; discard the hypotheses that don’t fit the evidence; and believe the hypotheses that do.
“That second method is called science.”
Sean adds, “It’s more than that. The second method is called honesty, and it’s probably a good method to use in all sorts of fields in human endeavor…”
~ Refer David Albert, Columbia University, as quoted by Sean Carroll, seen on Cosmology at YearlyKos Science Panel – Science & Activism, C-SPAN 2007; refer YouTube
² Other extraordinary and meaningful films can be viewed on Pangea Day dot org. From the fifty-one short films, here are four personal choices listed in order of durations (each under ten minutes).
Elevator Music Music and culture politely clash aboard an elevator. Papiroflexia An animation about shaping the world with your hands. Mutual Recognition A Moroccan imam and his wife reflect on their romance that was to be built in deep, trusting, and enduring universal concepts of love and respect. My Mother’s Daughter In 2001, journalist Yvonne Ridley was detained in prison in Afghanistan while her mom caused events to unfold at home in Tanfield, England.
† I seriously doubt my DNA gives a whit that my name is David. I’ve begun considering that humans are just robots with expanded but willy nilly brains, and undefended, flexible minds don’t much help matters!
‡ The famous British team, Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean, won the Olympic gold medal in Sarajevo in 1984 with a dramatic free skate to Ravel’s Bolero. Refer Wikipedia
You may quote my words as long as you attribute my name. Staying Awake content may be forwarded in full without special permission for nonprofit purposes only, provided full attribution and copyright notice are given. Thank You.
On May 12, 2008, Space Weather emailed a message describing the Sun’s recent happenings. Then, Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) put up its web page containing a photograph and 20-second video. Here’s a paraphrase of their messages as an intro for you.
Astronomers are monitoring an unusually active prominence on the Sun’s eastern limb. Even veteran observers are impressed, using words like “amazing” and “jaw-dropping” to describe the activity they viewed. Near the clip’s end, a narrow burst of material can be seen shooting out of an active region near the Sun’s edge. Scientists describe it as a small coronal mass ejection.
From the SOHO page here, you may view the 20-second video showing the Sun’s recent burst. Patience may be necessary for the QuickTime player.
Sean Carroll, Theoretical Cosmologist, California Institute of Technology Senior Research Associate in Physics, spoke on contemporary cosmology for the YearlyKos Science Conference during the latter half of 2007. Follows are paraphrased notes from his entertaining talk about humans and the Universe.
The interesting news is the last ten years will be written into human history as the most recent moment in 13.7 billion years when scientists figured out the inventory of ingredients of which the Universe is made. A thousand years from now, the story will be that we got the inventory in our imaginations and in the data. It’s not only stunning that we discovered the data, but that we proved it, too. Here’s the inventory of the physical Universe.
Atoms are less than five percent of the total stuff in the Universe. We call that stuff ordinary matter. Atoms are us—all life, and the gases, dusts, planets, stars, everything visible in the Universe—and everything made of every kind of particle that’s ever been discovered in any experiment ever done is ordinary matter. All of it equals five percent of known creation.
Another twenty-five percent of the Universe is made of dark matter; we don’t see it, and we haven’t yet detected it in any experiment we’ve done on Earth. But we know it exists from observing its gravitational fields, and dark matter is something new that we need to find, directly.
Another seventy percent of the Universe, as we know it today, is something we call dark energy; it’s something even more mysterious and interesting than dark matter. Dark energy is not made of particles; it’s a kind of energy that’s inherent in the fabric of empty space, itself.
This NASA graphic is dated August, 1998. Percentages are approximate over the last 20-30 years of mathematical cosmology. ~ DM
So, you can see the good news and bad news of the situation we humans are in. The good news is we understand much about the Universe; the bad news is it makes no sense—and that alone puts us humans in our place: humans are no where near the essential substance of what’s happening in the Universe! We are only an olive in the martini; we are not the martini. As the Universe expands faster and faster, atoms that are us, our Earth Home, and all else visible in the Universe appear to be disappearing. ¹
In 1990, Carl Sagan (b 1934), astronomer and cosmologist, persuaded NASA to photograph Planet Earth from Voyager 1 spacecraft at a distance of four billion miles. The portrait is of our tiny home, a fragile speck of blue adrift in an unimaginably vast sea of space. In a commencement address for the public release of the photograph, Sagan offered these profound words as heard in the film, Pale Blue Dot. Refer Pangea Day dot org
“Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ‘superstar,’ every ‘supreme leader,’ every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
“The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood, spilled by all those generals and emperors, so in glory and triumph they could become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings; how eager they are to kill one another; how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light.
“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come to save us from ourselves. The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life; there is no where else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes; settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.
“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.” ²
Some evenings during study and writing, I throw my hands in the air, wondering how our species’ imaginations can swim the soup our little blue dot is in. Modernity has birthed and trained male rulers no less innovative and virulent than their ancestors.
Media are a soup of endless 24-hour persuasions all around Earth. Imagine media conglomerates as a thickened, slimy, warmed over porridge in which still too many USA residents seem to be swimming. A soup, rich in essential gratifications, grips citizens’ mediocre taste for even more misinformed appeal.
A likely ingredient in the media soup is shame if we covet dissimilar talking points of those of friends and business associates; frequently, we don’t want to ruffle anyone for uttering, then debating, opposing points of view when we would rather be congenial. Egregores in media are seasoned guardians of Earthlings’ shame and insult, especially if we should swear to step out of the addictive bowl to which our friends white-knuckle familiar allegiances. Corporate media sloths sprinkle newsy, addictive bread crumbs, while from financial branches they hang above us with their backsides to our bowl of conformity.
In February 2007, matters in the USA accounted for 79% of total news coverage for USA citizens’ information gathering. But, what was the primary story during February 2007? The death of Anna Nicole Smith, of course. The remaining 21% of coverage was international, that is, Iraq and little else; of that 21%, only 1% coverage included for example China, India, and Russia.
In this TED talk, Alisa Miller, head of Public Radio International, talks about why the USA media is actually showing less, although, evidently, we want more than ever to know about the world. She displays stats and graphs to gawk at!
Sometimes click videos twice to begin | duration 4:20
Staying Awake will say what merited people cannot say in public due to potential ridicule from others who butter their bread. If USA citizens are diverted by reading only The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe; if we are distracted by the likes of NPR, PBS, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, FOX, CNN, then we tend to care but tittle for tyrannies expressed by too many of our global sisters and brothers. ³
In addition, the gummy, media-selected soup of USA Presidential candidates is spiced and stirred by unspeakable scandals protected by marketeered public servants.
Art will be the last bastion when all else fades away.
~ Timothy White (b 1952), writer, thinker; Senior Editor, Rolling Stone; Editor in Chief, Billboard
If we remove our species’ protective layers of clothing, a rather strange anatomy is seen: a species once referred to as the naked ape. The human Earthling is actually a puny primate with an unprotected skin; with no natural weapon, no armor, no sharp spines, no venom, no fangs or claws; and equipped with little more than an enlarged brain. †
Through egregious stratagems built into media and technologies, intolerant masculine rulers of our species have trained themselves to intensely restrict all life forms on Earth, and not without forcing the trashing of our Earth Home.
But, what is the secret to the lavish, unprecedented success of the human animal? The Sun does art through human beings: without art first found in Nature, there would be no sciences, no technologies, no ideologies, no choices. The performing and silent arts are everywhere. Art has been and will always be with its Sun the first and last bastion for Planet Earth. We just forgot.
The art of Olympic Ice Dance has not been the same since 1984. The gracefully magnificent, unique choreography of the British team, Torvill and Dean, lifted a veil from the imagination of humans performing artistic movement. ‡
Staying Awake
an ezine with
your awareness
in mind.
Sometimes click videos twice to begin | duration 5:55 The Art of Ice Dance by Torvill and Dean
