Monthly Archives: May 2003

stuck to our brane

| c: olde | Comment

The Los Angeles Times has a friendly piece on the latest in multidimensional cosmology: brane theory.

It’s sorta like string theory but with easier math. So if you thought all that high school string theory was going to be as useless as trig and PE, you were only half right. Branes (word derived from membrane) are compared to layers between infinitely large spaces.

Essentially, a brane is a discontinuity in space-time, a boundary where things meet, like the surface of a pond where the water meets the sky.

“It’s a defect in the quantum fabric,” said Ruth Gregory of the University of Durham in Britain. On one side of the defect would be the vacuum of empty space. A vacuum with somewhat different properties might exist on the other side.

Imagine our brane as pond scum — a thin film that divides the air above from a deep (perhaps infinitely deep) body of water below. Most of what we experience is trapped in the scum. But beyond is a whole other world of currents swirling beneath the surface. Their motion might tug on our scum. We’d feel it as nothing but a gentle disturbance, never dreaming of what lurks below.

A brane doesn’t always divide one thing from another. It may just be a condensation of stuff, “a localized lump of energy and curvature that likes to hang together,” Stanford University physicist Steve Shenker said.

The brane world we live in would have to be 3 + 1 dimensions (three dimensions plus time), but they could have many more dimensions. Infinite pond, infinite scum. But no matter how vast the other branes are, we can’t perceive them, since none of the forces we perceive with can pass between branes.

Only gravity can’t be glued to a particular brane. Gravity, as Einstein revealed, is the curving of space-time itself, so it wanders willy-nilly where it will, leaking off our brane into what physicists call “the bulk” — the rest of space-time.

Brane scenarios offer an elegant explanation for why gravity is such a weakling: Maybe it’s not any weaker than the other forces. Maybe it’s just concentrated somewhere else in the bulk, or on another brane.

It’s interesting to consider the timing of these explanations of multidimensional universes coming out in popular newspapers. Or maybe it’s depressing.

Either way, imagining the phenomenal universe as an envelope of hyper-diemsional pond scum is strangely comforting.


Posted by zota at 04:15 PM


Don’t Look Now…

| c: olde | Comment

from Atrios:

“And I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it’s clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right?”

Bill O’Reilly
Good Morning America – March 18, 2003

He also promised to resign if tons of weapons weren’t found. Straightforward, unblushing, balls-to-the-wall. I guess that’s why he’s the one inside the television.

Which leads me to a hypothesis: people who enjoy mechanized death spectacle also enjoy being lied to.

For example take this this nobody’s home.

As Kevin Drum points out, most of what this administration says is reversed in actual policy. Two possible explanations for this are rank stupidity or a massive hidden plan which is too sinister to be clearly perceived.

But maybe it’s simpler than that. Maybe the “conservative base” just really enjoys getting flat out lied to. Maybe they get a deep in the gut visceral pleasure when things like “9/11″ and “bomb Iraq” finally blur together in one fuzzy image of flaming buildings.

What’s also interesting is how the truth is obliquely described by the symbolism in these lies. For example, “MO-AB!” — the massive new bomb which used Iraq 2 as it’s product rollout. The name comes from the Old Testament.

Moab was one of Lot’s sons, a member of the only family that God spared from the destruction of Soddom and Gommorah with heavenly fire. The Lot clan was under stern orders not to look back at the burning cities, but Lot’s wife took an unfortunate glance over her shoulder at the ashes of her friends and former life, so God turned her into a pillar of salt. Moab did not look back at the burning cities, and he lived happily ever after.

The MOAB bomb was used as an emblem for righteous heavenly vengeance upon the new Soddom/Saddam, but this time, everyone was supposed to stare directly into the fire. There was even a sense of open disappointment that the “shock and awe” was not more flashy. We were still being told not to look at what was actually happening, but in an interesting twist, the spectacle of burning cities was used as a tool for deception and distraction. We were under orders to stare directly into the burning cities and ask no questions, and thereby live happily ever after, with eyes burned to an unblinking crisp.

Some people seem to enjoy that “super bowl” feeling.

But help is on the way — Bill O’Reilly has promised to step forward and heal the blind, to turn their faces away from the hypnotic flames and quell their irrational apeshit passions.

What a relief.


Posted by zota at 01:56 PM


Desperation

| c: olde | Comment

In the National Review, Jim Lacey has come up with a very creative reason that we haven’t found any WMD in Iraq — it turns out Saddam Hussein only thought he had the weapons, see? But in fact, all his henchmen we’re lying to him, and he was just too dumb to know that he didn’t have any weapons for reals. Cause he’s so dumb.

Lacey suggests that the weapons scientists only pretended to work for the last ten years, and that every time Saddam would come poking around asking about the anthrax, everybody would look busy, use lots of big words, and point a piece of random machinery. As Lacey describes it, “what are the chances that the uneducated dictator could tell a centrifuge from a cow-milking machine?”

Ha ha! Boy he’s dumb, huh? But apparently this clever ploy worked so well, that it also managed to fool the entire focused attention of American and British intelligence.

A truly awe inspiring theory.

Following this logic game a little further, it would mean that the reason we went to war was actually just some weapons scientists pretending to be busy. (Woopsie! Oh well… At least we brought them democracy.)

Also, if Saddam were so stupid that he believed he had a weapons program that he didn’t really have, then America and Britain would have to be cosmicly idiotic to fall for the same gag. It would mean that most powerful and technologically advanced defense intelligence apparatus in human history was also unable to identify a cow-milking machine. Feel safer now?

It would also mean that the United Nations weapons inspectors were smarter than Saddam, America, and Britain put together, since they were able to see through the ruse of the slacker scientists.

But the thing that’s most confusing about this bizzaro-world story is why pro-war commentators would care enough to make up even more random excuses to cover the fact that America lied. I guess the most optimistic answer to that is that the growing pile of proven falsehoods is becoming so embarrassing that some people feel compelled to try out a lame Saturday Night Live sketch as a justification for war.

Another possibility is that the National Review is just trying to mess with people. The evidence of a threat to America, the thousands of deaths, the looming civil war in our new colony… hey, just joshin’ around! Just like those scientists were joshin’ that stoopid Saddam!

["Ingenious, methinks" quoth Andrew Sullivan. But where is the accountability?]


Posted by zota at 04:24 AM


Lies, damn lies and pundits

| c: olde | Comment

Since April 22, the New York Times of Blogs has written quite a lot about the accusation that an anti-war British MP named George Galloway accepted $10 million from Saddam Hussein.

{{ overload of links removed: just search instapundit’s archives }}

Yeah, that sure is outrageous. Boy howdy.

Except that as Daily Kos point out, it looks like the whole story is quote Colin Powell:

If concentrated into this dry form, this amount would be enough to fill tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of teaspoons.


Posted by zota at 01:34 AM


Long Arm of the Fatherland

| c: olde | Comment

The Department of Homeland Security was used to track the Texas Democrats who left the state to break quorum.

To clarify, the Republicans used Homeland Security in an act of domestic surveillance unrelated to any act of violence or even any crime whatsoever in an explicitly partisan act of political repression. The kind of act that has a name.

[via buzzflash]
[atrios has more]


Posted by zota at 04:02 PM


Tron: Episode 3

| c: olde | Comment

In a short preview clip from Matrix Reloaded, Lawrence Fishburne is Moses/Maud’Dib giving a motivational seminar in a big cave, with all his torchlit followers getting ready to jump on some sandworms and show the machines who’s boss.

From what I hear, the scene that follows is a rave/orgy. It looks bad…

But only bad in terms of plot and theme and consistency and blah blah blah. Some advance reviewers are saying the effects are good enough that no one needs no stinkin’ plot. For example Ross Anthony enthuses about an early scene where Neo fights an ever growing array of agents:

Smith spreads himself like a computer virus and Keanu finds himself fighting two Smiths, then three, until the entire urban courtyard is teaming with Smiths. The camera spins around the street fight as if it was a rock at the end of a string. The graphics are awesome, the choreography artful, and the build in intensity worthy of being likened to Ravel’s Bolero. Bravo! Bravo!

I suppose that kind of irrational exuberance is the only viable attitude to take when going in to a summer blockbuster movie. But Adam Gopnik in the hoity-toity New Yorker describes these same superhero antics in a more jaded light:

He fights the identical agents for fifteen minutes, practically yawning while he does, and then flies away, and you wonder–why didn’t he fly away to start with? As he chops and jabs at his enemies, there isn’t the slightest doubt about the outcome, and Keanu Reeves seems merely preoccupied, as though ready to get on his cell phone for a few sage words with Slavoj Zizek.

Gopnik points out that much of the appeal of the first movie had to do with certain very old mythologies about the world which have become increasingly relevant to a technologically mediated society. Although the idea that the entire world is an imprisoning illusion dates much earlier, he goes back to the medieval Cathars, a group based mostly in the Languedoc region of France who believed the world was an illusion created by Satan.

Gopnik wonders why a group who believed “there is no spoon” would take up non-existent swords to do battle for their beilefs. Maybe more interesting question than “why did they fight,” is the question, why was this particular heresy the target of such violent oppression? In addition to their belief in an illusionary world, the Cathars were also egalitarian, vegetarian, had women priests, lived lives of poverty and chastity, and maybe had homosexual rituals. In other words, totally doomed.

The Cathars were actually the only target of an official intra-European crusade. In a tourist’s guide to Cathar sites, the Guardian offers this description of the Albigensian Crusade:

The pope did not approve of buggery, even less of non-payment of tithes, so in 1208 he declared a crusade against the Cathars, a call eagerly answered by the King of France, who was covetous of the wealth of Languedoc. The crusade was motivated by the usual mixture of self-righteousness and greed, and conducted with extreme brutality.

When the armies of Languedoc were finally crushed, the Inquisition moved in and did such a good job that the heresy was almost totally eradicated.

It’s fascinating history, all the more so for being off to the side of the more official histories of Europe and the Church. Sly references to these beliefs and this history gave the Matrix a kind of depth, more interesting in the way the film seemed only half aware of how it embodied and enacted the illusions it claimed to discuss.

The best explaination of the relationship of a gnostic worldview to technology is the first episode of The Matrix, the 1982 Disney movie Tron. And like Tron, the second episode of The Matrix from 1999 seemed only partially aware of how cybertastically cynical it was being. It was a dot.kung.fu fashon cartoon, just like most of the news in the late 90′s, which offered enough frisson that the aforementioned Zizek was able to crib a title from it, by way of Baudrillard and Philip K Dick. Fun!

But this third episode of Tron being reloaded tonight seems altogether far too aware of how cynical it is. Matrix Reloaded apparently tries to overtly feed on gnostic history and the many conspiracies swirling around it , even calling one of its evil characters “the Merovingian.” Yeah, real clever.

Maybe it will be a fine cartoon, with lots of kicks and jumps and Pow Biff Zing, “whoa watch out for the coat tails, G — that’s digitized fawn skin!” zooom! Maybe if the screen is big enough and the speakers are world-dominating enough. Maybe if there is doubleplus mediation…

And speaking of total world-obiterating escapism, Gopnik’s New Yorker review also discusses the brain-in-the-vat problem (if you were a happy brain in a vat, why wouldn’t you want to stay that way?) and more specifically, the idea of “vat-English” — a language spoken by a community of disembodied brains in reference to the shared the image-experiences they’re processing (did someone say “blogosphere“?).


Posted by zota at 01:18 PM


Tron: Episode 3

| c: Uncategorized

In a short preview clip from Matrix Reloaded, Lawrence Fishburne is Moses/Maud’Dib giving a motivational seminar in a big cave, with all his torchlit followers getting ready to jump on some sandworms and show the machines who’s boss.

From what I hear, the scene that follows is a rave/orgy. It looks bad…

But only bad in terms of plot and theme and consistency and blah blah blah. Some advance reviewers are saying the effects are good enough that no one needs no stinkin’ plot. For example Ross Anthony enthuses about an early scene where Neo fights an ever growing array of agents:

Smith spreads himself like a computer virus and Keanu finds himself fighting two Smiths, then three, until the entire urban courtyard is teaming with Smiths. The camera spins around the street fight as if it was a rock at the end of a string. The graphics are awesome, the choreography artful, and the build in intensity worthy of being likened to Ravel’s Bolero. Bravo! Bravo!

I suppose that kind of irrational exuberance is the only viable attitude to take when going in to a summer blockbuster movie. But Adam Gopnik in the hoity-toity New Yorker describes these same superhero antics in a more jaded light:

He fights the identical agents for fifteen minutes, practically yawning while he does, and then flies away, and you wonder–why didn’t he fly away to start with? As he chops and jabs at his enemies, there isn’t the slightest doubt about the outcome, and Keanu Reeves seems merely preoccupied, as though ready to get on his cell phone for a few sage words with Slavoj Zizek.

Gopnik points out that much of the appeal of the first movie had to do with certain very old mythologies about the world which have become increasingly relevant to a technologically mediated society. Although the idea that the entire world is an imprisoning illusion dates much earlier, he goes back to the medieval Cathars, a group based mostly in the Languedoc region of France who believed the world was an illusion created by Satan.

Gopnik wonders why a group who believed “there is no spoon” would take up non-existent swords to do battle for their beilefs. Maybe more interesting question than “why did they fight,” is the question, why was this particular heresy the target of such violent oppression? In addition to their belief in an illusionary world, the Cathars were also egalitarian, vegetarian, had women priests, lived lives of poverty and chastity, and maybe had homosexual rituals. In other words, totally doomed.

The Cathars were actually the only target of an official intra-European crusade. In a tourist’s guide to Cathar sites, the Guardian offers this description of the Albigensian Crusade:

The pope did not approve of buggery, even less of non-payment of tithes, so in 1208 he declared a crusade against the Cathars, a call eagerly answered by the King of France, who was covetous of the wealth of Languedoc. The crusade was motivated by the usual mixture of self-righteousness and greed, and conducted with extreme brutality.

When the armies of Languedoc were finally crushed, the Inquisition moved in and did such a good job that the heresy was almost totally eradicated.

It’s fascinating history, all the more so for being off to the side of the more official histories of Europe and the Church. Sly references to these beliefs and this history gave the Matrix a kind of depth, more interesting in the way the film seemed only half aware of how it embodied and enacted the illusions it claimed to discuss.

The best explaination of the relationship of a gnostic worldview to technology is the first episode of The Matrix, the 1982 Disney movie Tron. And like Tron, the second episode of The Matrix from 1999 seemed only partially aware of how cybertastically cynical it was being. It was a dot.kung.fu fashon cartoon, just like most of the news in the late 90′s, which offered enough frisson that the aforementioned Zizek was able to crib a title from it, by way of Baudrillard and Philip K Dick. Fun!

But this third episode of Tron being reloaded tonight seems altogether far too aware of how cynical it is. Matrix Reloaded apparently tries to overtly feed on gnostic history and the many conspiracies swirling around it , even calling one of its evil characters “the Merovingian.” Yeah, real clever.

Maybe it will be a fine cartoon, with lots of kicks and jumps and Pow Biff Zing, “whoa watch out for the coat tails, G — that’s digitized fawn skin!” zooom! Maybe if the screen is big enough and the speakers are world-dominating enough. Maybe if there is doubleplus mediation…

And speaking of total world-obiterating escapism, Gopnik’s New Yorker review also discusses the brain-in-the-vat problem (if you were a happy brain in a vat, why wouldn’t you want to stay that way?) and more specifically, the idea of “vat-English” — a language spoken by a community of disembodied brains in reference to the shared the image-experiences they’re processing (did someone say “blogosphere“?).