slime

Unlike a typical programmable agent that processes information through memory, slime mold decision-making can’t be predicted or replicated, since it coordinates itself entirely through sensory feedback with its environment. Exactly how this feedback happens is still unclear, but it has something to do with the extracellular slime traces that the cell leaves behind to tell itself where it’s already been. It does not make internal memories, but it does make choices based on past behavior. Its cognition is identical to movement; it knows exactly and only what it does. “Physarum’s spatial memory works,” writes Steven Shaviro, “not by internal representation, but rather by a physical marking of the very space that is being remembered. In this case, the map actually coincides with the territory.”⁶

achilles and the tortoise

Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but stood up and walked

The physical world requires a resolution amount used to distinguish distance while mathematics can use any resolution.

- At every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible.

- Instants are not parts of time, for time is not made up of instants any more than a magnitude is made of points, as we have already proved. Hence it does not follow that a thing is not in motion in a given time, just because it is not in motion in any instant of that time

Saturday, 23 July 2011
hypothetical desert
HOLDEN   You're in a desert, walking along in the sand
       when....

LEON     Is this the test now ?                              

HOLDEN   Yes.   You're in a desert, walking along in
       the sand when all of a sudden
       you lookdown and see a.....                               

LEON     What one ?   
       It was a timid interruption, hardly audible.

HOLDEN   What ?                               

LEON     What desert ?                              

HOLDEN   Doesn't make any difference what desert..
       it's completely hypothetical.

LEON     But how come I'd be there?                             

HOLDEN   Maybe you're fed up, maybe you want to be
       by yourself.. who knows.
       So you look down and see a tortoise.
       It's crawling toward you....

anthropometry

 

NEGENTROPY

Willard Gibbs’ 1873 available energy (free energy) graph, which shows a plane perpendicular to the axis of v (volume) and passing through point A, which represents the initial state of the body. MN is the section of the surface of dissipated energy. Qε and Qη are sections of the planes η = 0 and ε = 0, and therefore parallel to the axes of ε (internal energy) and η (entropy) respectively. AD and AE are the energy and entropy of the body in its initial state, AB and AC its available energy (Gibbs free energy) and its capacity for entropy (the amount by which the entropy of the body can be increased without changing the energy of the body or increasing its volume) respectively.

In a note to What is Life? Schrödinger explained his use of this phrase.

“

[...] if I had been catering for them [physicists] alone I should have let the discussion turn on free energy instead. It is the more familiar notion in this context. But this highly technical term seemed linguistically too near to energy for making the average reader alive to the contrast between the two things.

”

Indeed, negentropy has been used by biologists as the basis for purpose or direction in life, namely cooperative or moral instincts.

comet

http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/08/Comet_on_3_August_2014

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera on 3 August from a distance of 285 km. The image resolution is 5.3 metres/pixel.

obsolescence

The limiting factor in the art of IMINT is resolution. Technically speaking, resolution refers to the representation of spatial units as image units; thus in a one-meter resolution, one meter is rep- resented by one pixel. Anything smaller does not show up, for it can- not be imaged. Resolutions as high as ten centimeters are possible today but not commercially viable, and with these one can already distinguish different makes of automobile. But with the increasing perfection of seamless photo reconnaissance, which can see under clouds and beneath the earth, defenses against it are being perfected too. An increasingly important field of military research and development is the techniques of camouflage and image disruption against reconnaissance from space. The total view of the earth has intrinsic gaps, both small and large, which could become a determining factor of blindness. The gap that today is probably the most important, besides resolution, is the window of time between the recording of an image and its analysis. In a crisis, only brand new images immediately analyzed by experts are of any use, and the most high-powered research today is devoted to closing this window through improved reproduction technologies and more effi- cient organization.31 Just as resolution places a limit on the visualiza- tion of space, transmission is the limit for the timeliness of intelligence; its “military usefulness” fades quickly until highly relevant material becomes merely historical.

Knowing the Enemy: The Epistemology of Secret Intelligence EVA HORN

mesh

Non-Aristotelian Concepts of Place, and Space

 Nicole Oresme

RezaNegarestani

intensity and extensity

QLIPHOTH / QLIPPOTH

 

shell  centre / southbank / harmless travellers / dirty fossils

->

QLIPHOTH/QLIPPOTH  Lit. "shells" (singular: qliphah). Shades of the dead whose names appear in the books of Dyzan or Thoth, or the Book of the Law (AL). They may contain formulae of magical powers. RAW calls them "souls of those who died insane... the tulpas of Tibet... avatars of Coyote, the American Indian prankster-god." RAW also identifies them with the Celtic "little people" or faeries. Some of the twenty-two qliphotic entities of the Black Tarot, as envisioned by Grant, are defined herein under separate entries, although strictly speaking, the qlippoth are the names of the guardians of the tunnels, not the tunnels themselves.   To understand the qliphothic atus fully and to do them justice can be more deleterious to the artist or researcher than one might suspect. Conceivably, such complete understanding could result in the destruction of the ego without restoration in the Oversoul and therefore lead to actual madness. Dealing with the Qliphoth is the psychic equivalent of working with toxic wastes, dangerous animals or high voltage wires.  To invoke any force is to invoke automatically its opposite as well. In the more conventional sense, qliphoth are negative cosmic energies equating with the ten positive Sephiroth (e.g., Lilith is the evil counterpart of Malkuth). All positive aspects of divinity have their "excremental" sides, or demons: Beelzebub, Satanas, etc. The difference between metamorphosis and excretion is thinner than you might guess. From the universal lexicon:            

scall  English   scab          

chale  Cupeno           husk, shell          

skalli Icelandic        a peeled head          

geled  Hebrew    skin          

kulit  Malay   skin          

skull  English   the "shell" of the brain          

azal  Basque   peeling          

soale  Hausa   to peel off          

scale, shell English                  

scalp

Stone was "that which all men despise" -- and this in turn led the puffers to experiment with various types of excrement in order to see if that substance, perchance, could possibly yield the Secret of the Ages, since nothing so far had succeeded in doing so. And of course all such experiments accomplished was to mark the nadir of human folly.  What is this word "excrement", after all? It's from Latin, excernere, "to separate." It is a separation, a peeling away, as when we peel away a scab or a blister, making it no longer a part of ourselves. German scheiden/schieden (divide, separate, divorce) is simply another form of the word Scheisse (Fr. chier, Engl. shit) or its Greek equivalent schizo, "to split."  Latin cutis (skin), we should notice, first of all, is a cognate of Greek skatos (dung). Like the snake, what we throw away begins with the "skin" -- a word which probably represents a form of one of the universal roots. Compare Peruvian kina (the bark, or tree peeling, whence we get quinine) and Malay sisek (fish scales). Perhaps even the Austrian Kakadu word, kŠngir meaning "skin" is distantly related. At any rate, kŠngir is almost certainly the origin of "kangaroo," particularly since the Australian Warramunga word, nguru, meant "foreskin." These two are clearly connected and themarsupial associations are plain enough.The puffers didn't understand that excrement isn't exactly what all men despise. Or to be more precise, what matters isn't so much what is discarded and thrown away, but the value we place on the kept, as opposed to the trash. That faulty decision itself is where the problem lies. In fact, the Finnish proverb: Kulta kultainen v“lkkya roskatta, "gold glitters in
what is thrown away", is a sentiment well understood by shamans, witches and other marginal people, who are drawn to the rubbish heaps and middens, much as the money-vultures circle the stock market. What all men despise is "that out there," that is to say, the world. And they try incessantly to dissociate themselves from it. Yet, obviously, if we really were one with the world, then we'd have in hand "the universal solvent," we'd have
immortality because the world is immortal. In the world's all-powerful Nature is the very secret of turning lead into gold.Instead man tries desperately to throw out everything that is not self.Part of the problem is that the verb "to be" has two meanings (as in Spanish): one is an expression of permanent identityor equivalence to something else and the other an expression of a changing, on-going process. When we accept the error that we are not gods, we cease all self-examination, self-disciplines and self-improvement. We define god as an embodiment of "pefection" (or completion) instead of as the avenue of evolution and becoming. Only idols are perfect.Not even Odin ever thought of himself as perfect: he had to make many sacrifices in order to gain wisdom. Ditto Osiris, who was so far from being "together" that he was chopped up into little pieces. Granted, Jehovah is perfect, or thinks He is, but He is also a difficult God to respect, for that same reason. When you say we are not gods, you mean we are not idols. But an idol is precisely what modern man has made of himself. He worships himself, even though gods never
worship themselves. Obviously, they don't have to. Only man worships himself, though not really as a god or potential god. He worships himself just as he is: as a fatted, golden pig wearing Gucci shoes. The reason people push gods "outside" is the same reason they shove everything else outside, separating everything and calling it evil because it is unwanted. Anything which is not self, including the planet earth, is felt to be of no real value. in fact, matter is simply unwanted "dirt." Most of the self is thrown away, at least that part of the self which demands the most work or struggle. All that may remain is the momentary gratification of physical need: food, drink, sex, rest, entertainment. To put a god into that strait-jacket, even a minor one, is to disrupt the routine, to interfere with the direct line of ice cream to mouth. Besides, the puffing up of an imaginary personal ego is a thousand times easier than the expression of difficult, real Divinity. Standing far enough away from the world empowers objectivity to serve as the perfect defense of the ego. Here ego cannot be challenged and "Science" and "Reason" become the last refuges of Subjective Solipsism. In the Qabalah this peeling away of the self, this separation or "excrement" is called a Qlipha (pl. qlipphoth). The qliphoth are the negative personifications. All the expressions of Divinity have their "qlipphoth": Samael, Beelzebub, Satanas, etc., as we've said. And, in truth, these are what people actually bow down to: these idols that are made up out of excrement. Divinity that lies outside of self is not divinity. in contemporary Occidental man's desperate struggle to separate himself we would do well to remember Alan Watts' comparison of the self to an onion. You can peel and peel until there is nothing left.

THE MAGICIAN'S DICTIONARY

An Apocalyptic Cyclopaedia of Advanced M/magic(k)al Arts and Alternate Meanings

EE. Rehmus 

All space is already occupied by the enemy

Gustave Courbet is one of the leaders of the Commune. He instigates the demolition of Napoleon's statue in the Place de Vendome because it is a symbol of militarism and imperialism. He writes I get up, I eat breakfast, I sit down and preside for 12 hours a day, my head begins to feel like a baked apple. But despite all this unaccustomed turmoil of the head and brain, I’m in a state of enchantment. Paris est un vrai paradis. The poets Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud are also involved. In the last days of the Commune, Edward Manet draws heartbreaking pictures of the Communards slaughtered at the barricades by the French Army


http://marxists.org/history/france/paris-commune/index.htm

May 16th 1871 /// to demolish the Vendôme Column

Basic Program of the Bureau of Unitary Urbanism

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.ccwgraduateschool.org/a-conversation-between-michael-asbury-and-sean-lynch/

The Commune of 1871

On 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin became the first human to travel into outer space. In his space capsule he carried the remnant of the red flag flown over the Hotel de Ville in the heart of the Paris Commune in 1870.

 

the French insurrectionist Louis-Auguste Blanqui (1805-81), ... spent most of his adult life in prison, and whom Walter Benjamin (writing in the 1930s) judged the most famous revolutionary before Lenin. Blanqui was elected as leader in absentia by the Paris Communards who offered to release hostages in exchange for him, but were refused, and it was in the wake of the Commune’s failure that Blanqui wrote his cosmological treatise L’Eternite par les astres (1873). In an infinite universe made from atoms of a finite number of types, Blanqui argues, the same combinations must arise again and again.

“The entire universe is composed of stellar systems. In order to create them nature has only one hundred simple bodies at its disposal… Every star, whatever it might be, thus exists in infinite number in time and space, not only in one of its aspects, but as it is found in every second of its duration, from birth until death… What I write now in a cell in the fort of Taureau I wrote and will write under the same circumstances for all of eternity, on a table, with a pen, wearing clothing… The number of our doubles is infinite in time and space… These aren’t phantoms: they are the now eternalized.”
Whereas Tegmark emphasises spatial repetition and variation (the idea that there is another “you” reading this article right now), Blanqui additionally highlights temporal repetition, leading him to conclude that progress is illusory; everything that can possibly happen has already occurred. It was this aspect that led Benjamin to see Blanqui’s cosmology as a precursor to the doctrine of eternal recurrence in Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883-5).
In The Arcades Project, Benjamin considers Blanqui’s significance as both revolutionary conspirator and pseudo-scientist, concluding that Blanqui’s cosmology is a capitulation to the principles of bourgeois capitalism that Blanqui had spent all his life fighting against. Blanqui’s multiverse is, says Benjamin, “the phantasmagoria of history”, a nightmare projection of capitalism itself. 


Andrew Crumey

Einstein Tomb by Lebbeus Woods

 

http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/lebbeus-woods-1940-2012.html

the space of the donkey

assorted meteorites

Any element which bends space around itself, makes other
elements dependent upon itself and translate their will
into the language of its own. ....






tektite - meteorite silica glass
campo del cielo / iron

both sides

Footprint on the Moon
July 1969, Armstrong and Aldrin step out of the lunar capsule and onto the surface of the Moon. Their landing place is the Sea of Tranquility. Aldrin describes the landscape as ‘magnificent desolation’. It is an immaculate surface: trackless, uninterpreted.

In slow motion their feet sink into a shallow layer of dust, compressing the dry particles to leave an impression. The moment has gravity. This fine dust has no relation to the moon rock below, it has been deposited by the impacts of asteroids and meteors. It is the debris of shooting stars, the fall-out of portents and warning signs. It presents a perfect recording surface. The ground of an image.

There is no wind or rain on the moon, no tide or breath to take this fragile footprint away. We cannot cover our tracks. We measure our months by the moon but this small step onto its surface leaves a mark in the vastness of cosmological time. The imprint endures as cities fall and continents shift. It will remain longer than the cave paintings, those ochre handprints which mark out the earliest trace of what it is to be human. Imprints are potent. Remember Robinson Crusoe’s shock at finding a footprint in the sand of his desert island. He is thunderstruck, fearful, as if he had seen an apparition. The affect of presence from these traces of absence is profound. We are haunted.

Buzz Aldrin photographs the imprint of his boot on the lunar surface with a 70mm Hasselblad camera. The image of the footprint is transferred to film by the action of light onto a sensitive surface; a trace of a trace. Image of an index. The photographic image is evidence to be measured, scrutinised, magnified: a scientific souvenir and a political emblem. This extraterrestrial image is proof of landfall.

Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, fabricated a pair of shoes with the soles of smaller sneakers attached. His purpose was to leave a false trail. It is an echo of the confusion Hercules felt on seeing the track of his stolen oxen leading in one direction but hearing their bellows from another. The thief had forced the animals backwards.

In December I saw the trail of a rabbit in the deep snow. The spoor ended abruptly in the middle of the field. Around the final footprints the traces of two broad wings were beaten into the snow, the feather tips distinct. Rabbit and buzzard assembled into a simple endgame or a composite beast?

Back down to Earth, Aldrin’s film is stored in a freezer. Later it is digitsed. The scan is an ambivalent form, reading an image as object, shifting categories back and forth. Information is packed into file formats. Image becomes code. In the form of zeros and ones the print propagates easily; accelerating into the space of exchange; our virtual common ground. There it multiplies, transforms, leaks information, becomes noise, returns to stardust.

We trail no wires

Our policy is SPACE.

Anything that favors or enhances space programs, space exploration, simulation of space conditions, exploration of inner space, expanding awareness, we will support. Anything going in the other direction we will extirpate. The espionage world now has a new frontier.

Burroughs / Western Lands / 25

Get out of prison free / geometric revolution

other spaces

red cross hackney

laser drawing

2. wilderness