The Mind's Loxodromes

Blog post # 9:


Okay, relative happiness is once again upon me, as opposed to yesterday.

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A new idiom: When someone gives you enough of something, you shouldn't just say "That is plenty".

You should instead say,

"That's plenty times twenty."

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Why do digital clocks *to this day* almost all, if not all, *still* 
have the primitive 7-line LED-style display?? 
What I am saying is that, with today's technology, digital-clocks could all have high resolution, full color, interactive, customizable, 
multi-media, full-motion, internet-compatible, etc etc numerical 
displays. 
But almost none use anything but display-technology that is at least 
40 or so years old. (I, myself, have never seen any clocks with any 
other type of display, but I have not been looking too hard.) 
Why so much technological inertia??...

For, even every artist-designed and 'avant-garde' clock I have ever seen, while possessing weird and inventive other aspects of the clock's shape and look, still always has that 7-line ancient-technology display.

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And, is it possible in today's America to buy (at someplace other than a fancy-food grocery store) UNPICKLED raw cherry peppers?

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Try to guess the two words:


There are (at least) 2 words where we can say:
"The _(word 1)_ was _(word 2)_."
Both words have the same 3 vowels, in the same order, as 3 consecutive
letters within them.
Word 2 is two letters longer than word 1.
The initial letter of each word is contained within the other word.
Both words have at least 4 vowels, and a vowel in each word, which is
among the 3 grouped together, is duplicated within the word. (Not
necessarily same vowel for both words is duplicated.)
There are 3 consonants that both words share.
I don't know if I have given enough clues yet to narrow this down.
If there are any other answers than the two words I intended that fit all the conditions, then these alternative answers are also considered to be valid solutions to this puzzle.

My intended answer in a couple days in the comments to this very post.

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Ah, the mind's loxodromes.



We follow their pathways unto our invisible dreams.



-------------

Leroy

Dreams Of Mud

Blog post # 8:

I start off today with a children's joke.


Why are dogs usually so healthy?

Because people keep telling them to "heal"!

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On that depressing note, I move to something not at all a joke.

You all who like happy writing more than my more dark writings may want to skip the rest of this post, except for the pictures (which ARE happiness-inducing, I hope). Be sure, though to read all my other posts, anyway. Those before this post are for the most part more cheerful.

.
.
.
.




I was listening the other night to a BBC story about the mass-rape during the Balkans conflict about a decade ago.
In the story I heard of such unimaginable evil. Also, in other stories of the conflict I heard of incredible atrocities being committed.
(People being forced to have sex with their own family members; women and children being raped and forced to become pregnant by the thousands; I heard that at least one man was forced to bite the testicles off of another man, then made to drink motor oil; women having their breasts chopped off. Stuff like that.)

Then, to add to my disgust for humanity, I just recently read an article about how US-held prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq not only were tortured, but hundreds of these prisoners were tortured TO DEATH. (I already knew about this, but I still was shocked when I was reminded of it.)

So, I conclude, I really doubt that there is a benign god or gods, at least a god or gods with any ability to affect reality. But, I continued, there may indeed be a Devil.

Yes, there is a devil, and it is humanity. Maybe it is ALL of humanity, including the so-called innocents. Yes, it is just a few of us who have committed infinite evil. But this evil is so infinite that the guilt extends via our very humanness to all of us. For one thing, we are all at least somewhat guilty because the evil has been successfully committed. We have failed, or never tried in the first place, to prevent this evil. That makes all of us culpable.

And if we are all guilty for such evil, then maybe we all deserve to be damned.
I am not saying that we all will be damned, just that it would be a fitting punishment for our extreme failure to prevent such horrific evil.

(continued below)



And, yes I doubt that there is a god. But maybe there is, and god is evil too, maybe more so than humanity.

For, God rewards those who are humanity's most sinister, and punishes those who are humanity's innocent victims of evil. (For example, "honor killings" of rape victims, which I admit may not be God's will; But it is God's will, I bet, that people who suffered emotional trauma as children live decades less than others on average, according to a new study.)




And, as we hear time and time again, stress will kill you. Is this really fair to those who have suffered? Is that really fair to the women and children who were raped or to those who suffer in any of the world's many wars?

Tell those who were tortured in Guantanamo that stress is going to kill them.

"Now now, Mohammed. You have got to do something about your blood pressure!"....

This all makes me sick.


Cheerier posts later.
I promise.

Thanks, sorry,
Leroy

Rather Disturbing

Blog post # 7:

America has the "The War On Poverty", "The War On Drugs", and now the "War On Terror".

What America, and the rest of the world, really needs is a
War On War!

Fight for peace!

And I mean, don't just give "Peace on Earth" lip-service.

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Existence.



As I said in an earlier post, I don't know if WE exist (let alone a god).

Back when I was a teenager, I was super under-weight because of an eating disorder I had. When I was in the hospital for my weight-loss, I heard schizophrenia-esque voices claiming that I was being put into suspended animation, and my dreams would be computer-controlled to appear real. (As in the movie The Matrix. But this was way before that movie came out)

These computer-controlled illusions were called "productions", and the device that manipulated them was called the "production machine".

Well, I recovered after that episode of my life, thankfully. But sometimes I wonder if the voices were telling the truth. For instance, on many occasions when I am in public I will be thinking about something, then someone near me will mention a word or concept that echoes what I was thinking about.
Sometimes I will think, "If this is just a dream, then somone in this room will cough in 3 seconds." Three seconds later, I hear someone cough.

Sometimes, when I am wondering about the answer to a question, I will "ask" the universe for the answer. I then take a book or a sheet of paper with text on it, and randomly pick out a word or phrase. The "answer" almost always makes sense in terms of the question. The answer isn't always true, I must say! But lots of time it is, or is close to the truth, it seems.

Anyway, reality sometimes seems false, somehow.

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Speaking of non-existence.


Why was it ironic that the two nihilists fell in love with each other?


* They had nothing in common...*

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I loathe our society's beatification of beautiful people, and loathe our bigotry -- that is what it is, really -- against the relatively less attractive.

I bet in other older societies, ugly people were revered -- much like how the elderly and mentally ill were revered in some older societies. For, the ugly people at least were probably useful in scaring away demons and evil spirits. And they probably allegedly had other magic powers.

Okay, I am going to do what I swore to myself I would never do: Post my picture on my blog.



And, take this!, evil spirits!



I LOVE my ugliness. I am like the punk-rock singer (or character actor) who uses his ugliness to his own advantage.

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Joke:

I'm so old
that I am losing all of my hair.

Oh, it is still attached to my head,...
but I keep forgetting where it is..

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Q: Why was the vending-machine only selling chaos?

A: Because it was out of order.....

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Two pirates pass each other on a ship's deck.
"Aye, captain!", says one.
"Shouldn't that be 'Aye, aye, captain!'?", asks the other.
"Ehh... I believe in an 'Aye' for an 'Aye, aye'."...

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Given that many of the Religious-Right'ers believe that "Life begins at conception", shouldn't they strive to be, instead of "Born again":
"Unborn again" or "Conceived (immaculately this time...) again"?...


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Q: Where do doctors speak to the dead?

A: At a say-ahhhh-nce....

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Thanks,
Leroy Quet

Twisted Up

Blog post # 6:

Just fun stuff today. I am not in the mood to get philosophical. (Not that philosophy isn't fun!)

Okay, a LITTLE philosophy, sort of...

What the world needs...

is fewer bars and liquor stores,

and more coffee-shops!

(Well, actually that is just an opinion.)

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Ah, to tickle a cute cuticle.

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I have made a list of clues that equal so-called "inverse cliches".
(For example, the answer to number one is "The storm of the eye.")

Can you guess the others? (Most of these are easy.)

1) Ocular turmoil.
2) Junior's pistol.
3) A barrier from one rug to another.
4) Charades, for example.
5) Less heavy than quick.
6) Obtain provisions before the present becomes the future!
7) A plank suspended above Joe.
8) 6 things hit the time-keeping machine, later 6 more did again.
9) If you do not accumulate, you will not suffer.
10) The sniffer obscures light.

Answer in a couple days in the comments to THIS post.

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Have you heard the following before? I don't remember if I made it up myself, or if I heard it (or heard something similar).
A sort of anti-simile.


The world's society is NOT like a spiral....

Because the spiral evolves as it revolves.


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Speaking of spirals...

.....##########....
...#...........#...
..#....######...#..
.#...#.......#...#.
.#..#...###...#....
..#..#.....#....#..
...#..#####....#...
....#.........#....
.....########......

(View with fixed-width font.)

Thanks,
Leroy Quet

PS: Sorry for this relatively LAME post. I can do better.... sometimes.

Time, Wondrous Time

Blog Post # 5:

My mind has become a void. And in that void, nothingness is encased.



So, what about TIME? Is it asymmetrical, as is entropy?

Or is it all in somewhat in balance, as a palindrome?



Perhaps time is an illusion, the direct result of memory.

Or perhaps memory is a reality, the direct result of time.

It is widely known that many of the laws of physics work in backwards-moving time much like they work in forwards-moving time.
(A ball tossed upwards in a gravity-field in a vacuum decelerates as it ascends at the same rate that it accelerates as it then descends.)

Yet this is not always the case. For example, entropy -- the tendency of a "system" (science talk) to go from order to disorder -- is usually uni-directional. A system CAN go from disorder to order, however, is there is an intent by some organizing "machine" to do so.
(Us, not me, cleaning our houses, for example.)

So, maybe consciousness -- the force of observation in the universe -- is a form of reverse-directional time. It remembers. It orders the chaos. It composes the music and poetry and paints the pictures.



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Switching gears, slightly.

E = MC-squared.

In other words (tell me if you have heard this before):

Einstein = Mankind's Coolest Square.

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Speaking of squares, I have to say that I am a square, yet I am a NONconforming square.

Let's review the facts of my nonconformity, shall we? The don'ts:

I don't drink much.

I don't smoke.

I don't have a job (by intention)....

because I am crazy,

and because I don't like money much.

I don't drive.

I don't dress well.

I don't keep my place that clean.

I don't have a girlfriend (because of the above stuff, mostly. But this is also intentional somewhat.)

I don't want to get married.

I don't want to have children.

I don't watch TV.

I don't use a cell-phone.

I don't eat meat.

On and on. Don't don't don't...

But I am happy the way I am.
(Or at least I THINK I'm happy. By the way, if you THINK you are happy, aren't you REALLY happy?!)

Thanks,
Leroy Quet

The Big Questions

Blog post # 4:

First of all, thank you to all who read my .. asymmetric thoughts .. here.

(Note: There seems to be a bug with blogspot's comment-posting. If you get the message that your comment was not published, try again in a little bit. I seem to be able to post comments successfully about 50% of the time.)

------

First, an anagram:
What is this an anagram of?

Ah, man strains a GI.

(Clue, it is not about a constipated drill-instructor. But you can tell that I STRAINED to come up with a semi-coherent sentence that anagrams with the secret phrase.)

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Maybe I saw this before, but I realized just the other day that:

A mustache is a.... mouth brow....

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(And I may have heard the following before too. It sounds like a George Carlin observation.)

Why is the top of the inside of your mouth called the ROOF of your mouth?

Since the "roof" of the mouth is really the underside of the inside of the mouth,
shouldn't it instead be called the CEILING of the mouth!???...

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Ah, all this talk about constipated drill-instructors and mustaches and mouths makes me turn to thoughts about the nature of reality.


Or more specifically, I am wondering about the nature of God. For those who know me and my lack of beliefs, and who are religious, don't worry. I am NOT here today to attack God or God's existence.

(Or should that be the existence of "God", or maybe the existence of " ' God ' ", nested inside any number of quotation marks.)

I am here instead to seriously wonder, hey, what if God DOES exist.



I saw Allah in Valhalla....

Well, first let me tell you all where I am.
I have no beliefs of any certainty. I am an agnostic.
But if I believed in anything regarding the topic, I would be an atheist.
But if I was religious, I would probably be a Buddhist.
But if I believed in the theistic God, then I would probably be a Deist.
But if I were a Christian instead, then I would probably be a Unitarian.

Maybe I would. I don't know. I don't even know if WE exist at all, let alone if God exists!

But let assume that God exists. I would say then that God is PROBABLY the 'zero-point energy of the false-vacuum' (maybe), to borrow terminology from physics.
This energy is the lowest possible energy of empty space, which is a positive amount of energy, since -- because of quantum physic's uncertainty principle -- there can be no energy lower than this. (For, if there was zero energy in parts of space, then this energy level would be absolutely certain, which is forbidden.)

So, maybe God's existence is defined by uncertainty itself!

Or maybe God both exists and doesn't exist. (God's existence is in a "superposition of states", to borrow more physics terminology.)

-

And as long as we are merging science and religion, I would say that the singing of the angels (maybe there are no angels, but their singing does exist) is the cosmic background radiation white-noise.

And maybe God is all about being omniscient, but does not have any super-powers and perhaps did not create this universe.
Or maybe....

So much to consider, so little time.

Ha! Life after death. What about that, Great Leroy, the knowing one???

Well, hmmmm.

I heard on the news one time that SOME people who are close to death, but recover, remember seeing Heaven and all that. Muslims see Mohammed, Christians see Jesus, and (get this) atheists see a Heaven without any god. Some people have even reportedly seen Hell. (I heard about the visions of Hell from an unreliable source, though.)


But maybe the after-life experience is all an illusion caused by the dying brain. Maybe. Maybe not.

Going back to the zero-point energy theory of God, maybe the afterlife is the merging of the soul with the energy of the universe,... man.

And yes, the soul!

The soul is basically what, outside of our physical selves, makes us each an individual, or that is what it has been defined as.

So, is it our memories? Is it our consciousness? As far as consciousness is concerned, some scientists have theorized that little carbon structures in all our cells called "micro-tubules" (I am going by a distant memory of mine here) interact with the physical world via quantum mechanics, basically because the structures are so small. Some have theorized that these micro-tubules are where consciousness arises in us.
If these are indeed the center of our being, of our awareness that we are aware that we are aware that we are aware that..., then that would mean that our ENTIRE body is the seat of the soul.
There is some small evidence that this is indeed fact. When some people receive donated organs, they report having vague memories once belonging to the donors.

I once had a dream that every individual's soul had a unique shape. This shape related to our personalities. (And so I guess it could change throughout one's life.)

But maybe the soul is indeed shaped, just like in the movies, like our bodies. (Although, we all may be sans robes or any other clothing in Heaven....)

Anyway, all in all, I am skeptical of the theories favoring the existence of a Heaven and a God (or gods). But nobody really knows.

Still, the point of this essay, if there is any point at all, is that The Answer to the Big Questions may be found in science. I don't think anyone should be afraid to look, anyway. But I think we are.

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One last thing before I go today, a simple word puzzle.
(I think I got the idea for this kind of puzzle from Will Shortz's segment on NPR.)

*Start with the English name of a certain color.
*Change one letter to get a relatively uncommon spelling of a common girl's name in America.
(2 syllables)
*Change this to the most common spelling of the same name.
*Change the last syllable of this latter spelling to get another color's name.
(There are actually two colors that will work for the last step.)

I will answer this (and the anagram puzzle above) later in a couple of days in the comments to this post, unless someone else answers these earlier (in the comments).

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Thank you,
Leroy Quet

On Symmetry

Blog post # 3.

I added the picture to the title of my blog. How do you all like it? The picture is titled "A Metaphor Sufficing". I have at least 1000 (!) pictures I have made that I could have used. So, I do not promise that this picture is the most appropriate. Not at all. But, as the title of the picture say, it suffices!

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I am a believer that at least some of what we dream (probably not all) is actually taking place in another universe. Since I read something about what follows in my dream last night, I think the idea may actually be plagiarized. (I may have seen something about this in THIS universe as well.)


As we all intuitively know, the sphere is perfectly symmetrical. Rotate it at any angle, and you still have a sphere that looks pretty much the same. (Unless it is covered with some kind or ornamentation. But the shape of it remains "invariant under rotation".)

Well, the sphere is therefore a representation of conformity, safety at the expense of freedom. This is America after 9-11. This is the latest fad, the oldest fad, all aspects of our society that remain unchanged, even after rethinking them.




But the antithesis of this is asymmetry, especially if indescribable in its shape. This is perfect freedom, nonconformity, ugliness, all our little uncomfortable feelings of not fitting in. This is what scares those in power. This is perfect in its misshapenness and imperfection.



But we, we are each somewhere between. We possess symmetries, but not an infinite number of them. Our souls strive for freedom, but for safety as well. This is beauty. This is evenness and oddness juxtaposed.



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The only certain reality is the darkness.
Beware the vacuum-decay.

Thanks,
Leroy Quet

We Meet Again

Blog-day 2:

So, I googled  "hyperthetically", and came up with almost 29000 hits.

I also yahooed "hyperthetically", and came up with 18300 hits.

Yes, many of those links are to webpages simply misspelling "hypothetically". But many many of them are posted by people, thinking they are as clever and original as I am, intending to write "hyperthetically".

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Hey, another anagram of mine.

DO SOUR NIGHTMARES RUST?

=

NO, THUGS STIR OUR DREAMS.

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Well, let us be frank, shall we. The one word that best describes me is LAZY.

Yes, I am creative, introverted, and mathematical.

But I am the damn laziest person I have ever known.

This is my hallmark. Laziness.

Inertia. Ah, inertia.

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Okay, finally, here's a puzzle from my past. (No math.)

Hopping Frog Puzzle

...........................

 The frog starts at the upper-left lilypad, visits every lilypad once and only once, and ends up at the lower-right lilypad. The frog does 
not land in the water. 

Follow the steps below in order when determining how the frog jumps 
between pads. 
(If the frog is to jump, say, 3 places in a certain direction, he jumps 
over 2 @'s/~'s, landing at the 3rd position {which should be a @}.) 

Frog's pond: 
(View with fixed-width font so rows and columns line up.) 

(@ = lilypad 
~ = water) 

@ ~ ~ @ ~ 


@ @ @ @ ~


@ @ @ @ ~ 


@ @ ~ @ @ 


~ ~ ~ @ @ 

Rules governing how frog jumps. 

1) Start at upper-left lilypad.

2) Jump diagonally (southeast, southwest, northeast, or northwest) 
either 1 pad or 2 pads.

3) Jump 1 horizontally (ie. jump either left or right to adjacent pad).


4) Jump 1 diagonally.

5) If frog is now at the upper half of his pond (on one of top 2 rows), 
then go to rule 2 (and do rules 2 through 5 again). Otherwise, continue 
at rule 6. 

6) Jump 2 vertically (ie. jump 2 either north or south).

7) Jump 2 diagonally.

8) Jump 2 vertically.

9) Jump 1 vertically.

10) Jump 2 or 3 diagonally.

11) Jump 2 vertically or horizontally.

12) Jump 2 or 3 diagonally (Jump diagonally whether jumping 2 or 
jumping 3).

13) Jump 1 vertically or diagonally.

14) Jump 1 vertically or horizontally or diagonally.

15) Frog should now be at lower-right pad.

I do not know how many solutions there are to this puzzle, but I have 
found no others. 
(But I have not looked hard for alternative solutions.)

 

Thanks,

Leroy Quet

 

Hyperthetically Speaking

Hello. Welcome to my new blog. I call it "Hyperthetically" because it is more than just hypothetical. It is more than simply conjectured. It exists if you do. Do you?

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First, some word-play. The following image represents a...

knot-ilus!



(I made this image just because of the pun.)

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Now some anagrams.

USA/Iraq game
=
As a quagmire

--

Afghanistan dies
=
If a snag, then I sad.

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The truth is a clock with many hands.



What time is it? Now. When? Then.

Oh, maybe the truth is a clock with NO hands.

(You people argue about this amongst yourselves...)

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We live in the psycho-mat. Yes, place your quarters here. You are in the machine, as it spins and suds us all. Seek the enlightenment of such pastel-colored plaid. Awake! We are still here. It is time for the rinse cycle.

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Let me share with you some other links.

My image website is here:

Update (9-30-2010): Web address censored because hacker added virus to site.

(You can get my email address there, too.)

--

My poetry blog, "Amorphous Trapezoid", is here:

http://prism-of-spirals.blogspot.com/

--

My games blog is here:

http://gamesconceived.blogspot.com/

In this blog there are many games I made up.

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Stay tuned...

Leroy Quet