My Ferris Wheel Dream

i had this dream that it was nighttime and i was riding on a ferris wheel. i could hear water flowing and crickets chirping and there was this strange music playing. as the ferris wheel was turning round and round the same scene kept repeating itself over and over again several times until toward the end of my dream when i could see myself riding on the ferris wheel and i was making faces at myself. then i woke up.

luckily i had several electrodes, diodes and wires hooked up to my head to record my dream. so here it is.

Pipeline

listen closely for the beat of the washing machine

Back To The Rack

this is a song about how much i hate pickup truck driving rednecks who pollute the air spewing their carcinogenic crap and thoughtlessly leave their monstrous, vile vehicles idling as if to say "breathe in more of my poison because i don't give a shit about the environment"; and i find it quite telling that more often than not, because they are sooo filled with compassion, it is they who have a "support the troops" bumper sticker on their life killing machines. yes, it is of course in their best interest to maintain the destructive and grossly inequitable status quo isn't it?

enjoy...

kcaB tI ekaT I

on july 25th i made a disparaging comment about people who like the indy using the mosquitoes to make my point. well i'd like to take it back so here goes...

The Beatles "Butcher" Cover

that same year, in 1966, the beatles also released revolver with the ultrarare "candlestick maker" cover. unfortunately once again stores refused to stock the album but this time on the grounds that it wasn't controversial enough.

so in 1967 they tried again with sgt pepper and the release of the "baker" cover. however this time, much to their chagrin, they were beaten to the punch when a similar album cover was issued a few months earlier by the american band jefferson airplane for their album "surrealistic phyllo".


with the deadline for the release of sgt pepper quickly approaching, the beatles hastily assembled several cutout pictures from magazines lying around abbey road studios in london to create what would become the front of the best selling album cover to that time by any band without a "three men in a tub" theme.

Rexall Edmonton Indy?......WHAT A FARCE ! ! !

well the ignorant, noisy, polluting indy is in town again. look at me i'm going around in circles....but i'm doing it REALLY fast...hurrah!

and further, anyone who would find this wretched spectacle of loud, fossil fuel burning, air poisoning machines entertaining....well there is really only one thing to say about that person...

Apollo

Hey Toronto and everyone else in the "greatest country in the world"...Reduce the amount of garbage you create!

bottom line (or bottom of the continuum) consider the impact that your actions have on others. but that's hard isn't it. it means reduce the garbage you create. it means consider where your food comes from. it means not using the air, water and land as our dumping ground. it means not breeding and being part of the exploding human population that thinks it has a god given right to this planet above all other creatures.

recycling banana peels is avoiding the issue....stop drinking your precious tim horton's coffee (with two cups so you don't burn your little fingers), stop with the fast food...it's garbage for the body and now it's garbage on the streets.

The Root Of All Evil

a good rule of thumb for detecting institutions, industries and belief systems which are deleterious to society and individuals is spotting those which try to suppress the truth (eg religion, capitalism, oil companies, the meat and dairy industry). that being the case, science and moral philosophy seem to be good bets for the future as they seek the truth, are not afraid of it and want to share it with the rest of the world. bad news for all you priests and politicians, capitalists and masters of war. your days are numbered, for the truth is out there and you cannot keep it from being heard forever.

so in conclusion let me just say that i nominate richard dawkins and peter singer as the spokespeople for a kinder, more enlightened future.

DOGMA IS THE PROBLEM

the philosopher paul churchland at the 2006 beyond belief conference gave a speech where he said these words and i want to type them here so i won't forget them because i thought it was bang on.. OKAY !!!? so here it is....ready?

he said...

where does morality come from? it comes from looooooooooooong experience, just as where science comes from. and the process is slooooooooooooow. and the hope that you can settle something quickly by finding a touchstone which can serve you forever is something which has infected badly most of the world's major religions and even philosophers of moral science. now if this is true then dogma is the basic problem here, because if you think you already have the absolute truth, whether scientific or moral, then you have a problem...you can no longer learn.

and now for the man himself...ladies and gentlemen i give you...
paul churchland

Dali World

How Much Earlier Would A Star Rise and Set On Mars Each Night?

excellent question...i'm glad you asked that.....because....

on earth there are 86,164 seconds in a day and 365.25 days in a year. now because of the fact that the earth revolves around the sun in said 365.25 days, a star at any location in the sky at a particular time (say oh, i don't know, just off the top of my head... 10:20...wow, that's ironic...that was what time my camping trip was ruined today due to high winds) will be in that position 3 minutes 55.904 seconds earlier for each subsequent night (86,164/365.25), until a year later when it will be in the very same position at that very same time once again. and for those keeping score, the star will have "moved" approximately 59.14 arcminutes each night or the width of nearly two, count 'em, TWO full moons! (let's discount the minor shifts due to precession [about 49.85" {in this case the symbol, " , means arcseconds not inches}/year or the size of a dime at 74.5 meters...that is of course a very rough estimate using only "stone knives and bearskins" (in THIS case,", means quotes not inches OR arcseconds)] )

on mars there are 88,775.244 seconds in a day (martian sol) and 668.5991 of those sols in a martian year which means that a star would be in a particular position in the sky 132.778 of your Earth seconds earlier each night.

OKAY?!

ACCELERATION DUE TO GRAVITY

g = GM/r^2

where:
g = acceleration due to gravity
G = Newton's gravitational constant 6.67 x 10^-11
M = mass
r = radius


39940.65265km = polar circumference of the earth
40075.01669km = equatorial circumference
5.9742x1024kg = mass of the earth

-21.3847km difference in radius to the center of the earth between equatorial radius of 6378.137km and polar radius of 6356.7523km

1° latitude = 110.946km = -.237608km difference in radius to the center of the earth travelling from the equator to the pole

9.79530367199 m/s^2 = acceleration due to gravity at the equator
9.86131913338 m/s^2 = acceleration due to gravity at the pole

.06601546139 m/s^2 difference between the pole and the equator = 7.335051266x10^-4 m/s^2 per degree latitude

.237608km = -7.335051266x10^-4m/s^2 difference in acceleration due to gravity

1000m in elevation = -3.087x10^-3m/s^2 = -.0315% weight difference
31.7460317km in elevation = 1% weight difference
w = mg

84kg mass at the equator = 822.80550844716 newtons
84kg mass at the pole = 828.35080720392 newtons

828.35080720392/g at the equator = 84.56611810541586kg at the pole (which we mistakenly refer to as weight. mass of course remains the same wherever in the universe you are)