Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Pose for your picture

 

Here is the shape of the photon that comes out of the calculations. Image credit: Benjamin Yuen

From analog to digital depending on whether the photon is moving in space as a wave or interacting with an electron as a particle, the ability to see what this boson actually looks like remained but a dream until now.

Researchers from the University of Birmingham, UK, have developed an intriguing computer model to understand how light and matter interact. As tasks go, it is exceptionally hard, but the team was able to develop a strategy to simplify the problem. In doing so, they were also able to create something peculiar: an image representing the precise shape of a single photon.

A photon is a particle of light. Light (and matter) exists both as a particle and as a wave. This duality discovery was the solution to millennia of debate, when it became obvious from experiments that light does propagate as a wave but can also be described by distinct packets of energy, which is what we call photons.

The team took this continuous range of possibilities and simplified it by creating a discrete set. They were able to model in this way the interaction between an emitter and a photon, as well as how the photon travels into a distant “far-field”. The calculations were also able to provide a graphical understanding of the shape of a photon.

“Our calculations enabled us to convert a seemingly insolvable problem into something that can be computed. And, almost as a bi-product of the model, we were able to produce this image of a photon, something that hasn’t been seen before in physics,” first author Dr Benjamin Yuen said in a statement.

Light as a wave. | analog 





Light as a particle.



Light is indeed weird but so is reality. :)

And so it goes. - K. Vonnegut

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

ATACMS (pronounced “attack ’ems”).




The revised doctrine ...


Let's think about this. Question, Is Ukraine under the Russian Sphere of influence as the last time I checked, Ukraine's not part of Queens. As much as yours truly detests Putin, the start point for this ongoing disaster centeres on the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, a red line issue Putin considers to be sacrosanct due to the proximity of Ukraine to Moscow, something recognized by the US to be a valid concern back in the 80's and 90's. 

Factoid one ...


Factoid two ...


It is.

Does Biden & company have a clue about what they have done?
Seems not after reading quotes from people who obviously do.

Carl Von Clausewitz

“No one starts a war--or rather, no one in his sense ought to do so--without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by the war and how he intends to conduct it.”

“Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult”

“War is merely the continuation of politics by other means”

“...the side that feels the lesser urge for peace will naturally get the better bargain.”

Sun Tzu

“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

“To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy.”

“Build your opponent a golden bridge to retreat across.”

“One mark of a great soldier is that he fight on his own terms or fights not at all.”

Musashi

“You can only fight the way you practice”

“If you do not control the enemy, the enemy will control you”

“Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.”

“To become the enemy, see yourself as the enemy of the enemy”

Lastly ...

Orwell

“The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. 

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred,
comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

“If people cannot write well, they cannot think well, and if they cannot think well,
others will do their thinking for them.”

Lest we forget ...

In the end, as per Orwell's first quote, the  MIC rules because the Ukraine tragedy, like Vietnam, like Iraq and like Afghanistan, is all about the money. Always has been, always will be.

Monday, November 18, 2024

Glimpses ...


Of B&W


Channeling the 50s


Angle 1


Mirror, Mirror


A cloud beckons


4/C Variant

The Procuress


Love the slyness of Vermeer in his wonderful painting, The Procuress, depicting lust and an ongoing business transaction with delicious irony and consummate taste. Awesome to a fault, complete with a possible self portrait (the man on the left) of an artist for the ages. :)


Sunday, November 17, 2024

Htrae


Back in 2017, yours truly did a piece, you guessed it, titled Bizarro World, describing The Donald's first administration through the eyes of a different reality driven by rage, incompetence and an astounding lack of understanding the art of governance in every way, shape or fashion. Now, fast forward to 2024 and channel Groundhog Day through the lens of Htrae, the alternative DC universe indirectly depicting the 2nd coming of Trump but this time, one sees the gloves are off when one has the intestinal fortitude to analyze the "quality" of his incoming cabinet coming to us on
January 21st, 2025.






Lest we forget ...


To be continued ...

Wind ...


Existence is ...

To yours truly, there are sounds most profound, the kinds one never gets tired of like those of the ocean or a stream but for me, the sound of wind moving through trees is the one. Primal, invisible save for the motion of objects the wind moves through, resides in the memory of the mind forever. 

Saturday, November 16, 2024

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act,

Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, a set of actions defined by John Boyd's OODA loop. shows, in depth, the steps every organism takes in order to survive also applies to better understanding how the limits of knowledge, driven by uncertainty, incompleteness and entropy, depict a reality we will never fully understand.  To see why, the animation depicting one example of chaos beckons. :) 



Interesting enough, OODA, when examined closely, relates to the act of creation without question.

  1. The Act of Creation - Arthur Koestler: The creative act is the joining together of two or more seemingly dissimilar ideas that generate a heretofore unexpected result. i.e. Chemistry - H20 consists of 2 Hydrogen + 1 Oxygen atoms, both explosive yet, when combined, becomes water. 
  2. The joke: Henny Youngman - Take my wife, Please. :)
  3. Creativity starts with curiosity, the start point to the asking of a question:
    Why is this the way it is?
  4. Question everything - Einstein
  5. Creation & destruction is part of the creative process as everything has a cost thanks to the two laws of thermodynamics.
  6. The ability to see relationships is key as everything is connected because reality is a Quantum space and entanglement stitches it together.
  7. The creative act is always visual. Think Stevie Wonder and Songs in the Keys of life.
  8. Play is indispensable. What if ... is the real deal here. A sense of wonderment is key.
  9. Creativity takes courage as new ideas disrupt the "natural" order of things.
  10. Creativity is problem-solving. It matters not the discipline used save that said discipline shapes how the creative act is produced.
  11. The act itself is ineffable and cannot be explained. Like quantum, creativity just happens. It cannot be forced, only acted upon when the idea shows up. The finished act can be explained after the fact without question.
  12. Practice makes better. Beginners mind and intuition rule.
  13. Attention to details.
  14. Passion is a prerequisite to create anything of value.
  15. The creative act is selfish. One does not create for others, only for oneself.
  16. The size of the problem solved dictates the significance of the creative act. i.e. Mixing anchovies with pineapples on a pizza is a creative act. The size or importance of the problem solved, not so much while Einstein's Theory of relativity proving that Newton was wrong at universal scale, is.
  17. Creativity, like tech and existence, has no morality. It simply is.
  18. Stay hungry, stay foolish - Stewart Brand/Whole Earth Catalog. :)
  19. AI is but a tool, the issue now becomes, does the tool become the master? A good question to ask is it not?
  20. Being first to come up with a new idea is essential. Darwin & Wallace relates as Wallace was two weeks later than Darwin in explaining why evolution matters.
  21. The Act of Creation, whenever possible, runs counter to the limits of knowledge as needs warrant.

Circularity

 Characteristics of great art
  1. Clarity.
  2. Simplicity. It's easy to be complex, simplicity is hard. Einstein: Keep it simple, not simpler.
  3. Good artists create, great artists steal. - Picasso
  4. Great art always involves the process of discovery.
  5. Timeless. Bach, like fine wine, never ages.
  6. No spin. 
  7. Details, details, details.
  8. As stated before, great art applies to all disciplines.
  9. Connections to differing disciplines apply.
  10. Less is more. Dizzy Gillespie
  11. Great artists are never afraid to make mistakes.
  12. Doggedness. It takes thousands of hours to become good at something. 



Kind of Blue is considered to be the greatest jazz album of all time even though
Oliver Nelson's The Blues and the Abstract Truth is right up there on the pantheon of the greatest of all time IMHO. This is not about KOB per se but rather about Bill Evans' liner notes and why his writing is just as profound as the album itself because it's all about improv and it's role in the creative process.

To whit.


A notion of Einstein's Special Relativity ... Vue style :)

Remember, walking is controlled falling. 

Friday, November 15, 2024

Blurring the lines ...


Did a little mixing of Vue 3D images with real footage depicting a fall for the ages thanks to, unfortunately, a drought for the ages, courtesy Climate Change. :)

Thursday, November 14, 2024

"A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"


John Aster lives here ...

This pix indirectly relates to the fact the net's becoming an ad infested surveillance platform as said connected utility of the world is too important for the power elite and governments to allow it to remain free for all to use without being spied upon or censored as needs warrant.








Web 6.0

In the near future, AI rules as cheaply generated misinformation runs riot, kept under the control by the deep state, where "truth" becomes an entity residing in  "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"



Sound familiar?

A Dumpster Fire ...


A Dumpster Fire for the ages looms now that Agent Orange is on track for a second term as POTUS thanks to a feckless democratic party not knowing how to elect anyone to office as important as the presidency. With this being said, core competency is required whereby people possessing suitable skill sets are placed in relevant positions of power able to run a country in competent fashion under the leadership of the president, something FDR knew at deep level (Eleanor anyone? :)), a concept not understood by the incoming disaster known at The Donald. 

His first term was termed The Clown Show. The second will be The Dumpster Fire. Yours truly will not list the names of incompetents intended to populate his administration save for the fact Musk, in an unofficial position of co-efficiency expert, reminds one of The Man Who Came to Dinner as it seems Musk is channeling this sharp comedy by hanging out at Mar-a-Lago to the extent even Trump & Co think it to be a little weird.